


It's not the puzzle you were expecting

by dogandmonkeyshow



Series: Unforgivable Things [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Post-Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, not s04 compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 03:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 97,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5148155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogandmonkeyshow/pseuds/dogandmonkeyshow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After returning from the shortest mission in the history of MI6, Sherlock confronts enemies old and new in his efforts to solve the mystery of the "Moriarty video".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We can make up our own rules as we go along

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to Nagaem_C/willowmeg and dioscureantwins for politely but forcefully reminding me that shortcuts are A Very Bad Thing and that headcanon must not remain solely in the head if you base part of your fic on it. If this fic isn't crap, a goodly part of the reason why is because of them.
> 
> This story runs in parallel to the third story in the series, _Some things we do are unforgivable (but must be done all the same)_ , and can be read before, after, or alongside it.

**Saturday, January 3**

For Sherlock, returning to Baker Street after the Magnussen extravaganza, his visit with Her Majesty's Intelligence services, and his aborted Eastern adventures had been stranger than the return after his two-year hiatus. But Mrs Hudson hadn't screamed her head off when he reappeared this time, which had been a welcome improvement. 

On the drive back from the airfield Mycroft had been unnaturally quiet, had seemed almost chastened. Ordinarily, Sherlock would have revelled in the sight of his brother so set back, but it had only added to the sense of unreality of the situation. They'd watched coverage of the “Moriarty video” on the small television in Mycroft's car. Other than “But he's dead; he wasn't a foot away from me when he did it,” and “Yes,” no words had been spoken the entire trip. At Baker Street there had been a brief litany from Mycroft on logistics and politics and other things that Sherlock hadn't wanted to think about, and he now realised he probably should have attended to more. 

Superficially it had appeared to be just another return, but they'd both known it had been no such thing. Mycroft had stood in the middle of the flat watching Sherlock stalk from one end of the space to the other, touching things: chair, violin case, skull, microscope. He hadn't known then why he'd done it, but doing it had calmed him somehow. Now he understood: he'd needed the reassurance that what he saw was real. That he had returned to Baker Street, to his things and the dust and Mrs Hudson and London and everything else.

His phone pinged; it was John

_You OK?_

He stared at the message for ten seconds before replying. _Fine. SH_

Sherlock sat in the lengthening dark, his coat pulled tight around him, and listened to the street noise from below. His city, and he'd almost had to leave her for good. He fell asleep curled up on the sofa, the murmurs of his truest love the only lullaby he'd ever want.

~ + ~

**Sunday, January 4**

The next morning, Sherlock was still laying on the sofa, wrapped up in his coat, when he heard Mrs Hudson hauling herself up the stairs. She had a bundle of newspapers in a carrier bag. 

“Everyone's talking about that awful thing, Sherlock. It's all over the papers.” She pulled out the _Sunday Mail_ and shuddered at the sight of the front page, a still from the video, Moriarty's leering face in close-up and “HE'S BACK” covering almost the entire front page. Sherlock held out a hand for the bag. She dropped it on the floor nearby and ignored his scowl. “I'll just get your tea, then.” She paused at the door. “It's good to have you back home, dear. Even if you won't tell me where you were,” she said quietly before continuing on down the stairs in the little hop-step that meant her hip was acting up again.

After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, Sherlock stood and walked over to the window. As he'd suspected, there was quite a lot of press on the doorstep, waiting for him to make some sort of statement about Moriarty. There'd been a few of them scrounging about when he and Mycroft had arrived the day before but he'd ignored them, which was a guaranteed method for ensuring they proliferated.

Sherlock pulled out his phone and scrolled through his various feeds. Moriarty featured heavily, as well as a fair bit of speculation as to why Sherlock hadn't made a statement yet. Well, they could wait; he had nothing to say on the matter. Moriarty was dead. It had happened not a foot away from him and it had finally even been proved in court. If people were stupid enough to believe otherwise, then he wasn't interested in wasting his time attempting to disabuse them of their delusions. 

He heard Mrs Hudson's step on the stairs again and flopped back onto the sofa. By the time she made it to the top he was rummaging through the newspapers in a desultory fashion, glancing at the front pages and in an attempt to amuse himself, composing the first paragraph of each title's main story based on the front page headline text, font size and strap-line. By the time he got to _The Observer_ at the bottom of the pile, he was running at a miserable eighty percent success rate.

“Aren't you going to read them?” Mrs Hudson asked as she deposited the tray on the small table by John's chair.

“Why bother. I know they don't know anything. If Mycroft doesn't know what's going on, Rupert Murdoch certainly doesn't.”

She picked up the _Mail_ from where she'd dropped it before. “Such a horrible little man.”

“You make him sound like a grocer who shorts weight.”

She tsk-ed. “Who do you think it is, then?”

“It's a fake, obviously. Some time tomorrow the real story will get out that it was some sort of asinine publicity stunt. I look forward to Mycroft regaling me with the tale of whoever was responsible being tortured at a CIA black site in Morocco.”

“Honestly, Sherlock. That imagination of yours.”

“Would you rather it was real?”

“Of course not. Don't be silly.”

“Well, then.” He snapped open the front section of _The Observer_ and leant back into the sofa.

“Don't let your tea go cold,” she said as she ambled down the corridor to wreak havoc on the bathroom.

~ + ~

Sherlock was bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored. He stared at the Inbox on his phone. No cases, no inquiries, not even a glow-in-the-dark rabbit to take his mind off his infernal, dangerous boredom. Even the prospect of another Moriarty-related chase in his future didn't alleviate it.

 _Where are you? Expected you hovering annoyingly at the crack of dawn._  
_SH_

_Busy. Not everything in the universe is about you, Sherlock._  
_M_

_Why am I here?_  
_SH ___

_Ah, the supposed consolations of philosophy. Middle age imminent, is it? But then, forty is just around the corner._  
_M_

_You'd know about the decrepitude of middle age._  
_SH_

_Returning to old haunts?_  
_SH_

_?_  
_M_

_Oxford_  
_SH_

_Not my decision. Good luck with it, though._  
_M_

He stared at the final message. Well, that cleared up a thing or two, he thought. And raised another pair of questions in their place. 

Sherlock had spent two decades brushing off Mycroft's overtures to upgrade his status from irregular contractor to bound serf of the security services, and now here he was, being unceremoniously shoved into it against his will. Not that he had anyone to blame but himself. Well, he could blame Mycroft for not managing to finagle a way out for him, but Sherlock conceded, in the often ignored-corner of his brain where he stored his nascent sense of responsibility, that Mycroft might just have a point this time. Murder was a teensy bit over the line and Sherlock was going to have to pay some sort of price for letting his emotions get the better of him. 

Being a killer for hire, one of the officially unrecognised tools at the far edge of the bell curve of acceptable diplomacy, was a tricky game. Branching out on your own exposed you to all sorts of risks that were avoided when contracted by the government. But let the edge of a toe creep over the line and those protections disappeared. 

And now here he was. For someone who'd spent three decades refusing to acknowledge any higher authority, it was especially galling to be in his position: government asset fully owned and amortized, to be disposed of at the whim of unseen, unanswerable, unknowable Whitehall bureaucrats. Mycrofts, all of them. And the man himself unwilling, or more likely unable (and wasn't that a thought) to do anything about it. The situation left Sherlock with an unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling of vulnerability. But in the short term, he was going to have to at least go through the motions of obeying whatever diktats came down from Thames House regarding the disposition of his time. They could have not made him wait, though. The waiting for whatever it was, was driving him mad. 

He pulled up the last message he'd received, earlier that afternoon, with an address in Oxford and a time five days hence. No name, no indication of what it was about, but Sherlock knew that this was the first salvo in the beginnings of his new life, and he wasn't at all happy about it. 

How would he occupy himself for five whole days? There was only so much time he could spend on Twitter following the #hesback hashtag and watching crap telly. 

He could do something useful, like tidy the flat. Mrs Hudson would be thrilled, of course, and he might come across something entertaining under the piles of paperwork. But not likely. Messy though it was, Sherlock knew every document in the room. And MI5 would have taken anything interesting during his incarceration after Christmas. 

He could follow up on some of the experiments he'd begun before Christmas, but that would entail going out and getting supplies, which would require losing his MI5 surveillance and running the gauntlet of the press outside his door. It sounded too exhausting, so he discarded that idea. He rolled over on the sofa and thought about the kitchen table, covered in his scientific equipment. It called out to him. The calming focus, the distraction of intense observation. But for some reason, he hesitated. 

He wondered what, exactly, it would take to flush out his new surveillance. Not that he had to wonder about Mycroft's people; he knew from long experience exactly the threat level necessary to get them crawling out of the woodwork, though it required a trip to his old haunts in Tottenham or Hoxton if he wanted the man himself to make an appearance. 

Sherlock looked around him and wondered just how much trouble he could get into based solely on the existing contents of the flat. He wondered how far he could go with appearing to build a bomb before someone came and took him away. Not that he wanted another visit to his old MI5 cell. He'd need to de-bug the kitchen beforehand, then. 

But if he was going to go to the effort of de-bugging the kitchen, he might as well do the entire flat. A moderately interesting minute passed while he contemplated the probable distribution between the cameras secreted around the place by MI5 and those by Mycroft's people. 

_Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there_ , he thought as he leapt off the sofa and strode into the kitchen. A minute's rummaging garnered two jars whose interior residue he couldn't remember and didn't recognise. Without bothering to rinse them out, he dropped them onto the kitchen table, mentally labelling the jar on the left the MI5 jar and the one on the right MI6. Then he got to work. 

Sherlock reasoned that a systematic approach would yield the most reliable data, so he started in the room least likely to yield anything: the bathroom. For even spies had their limits, presumably. Hopefully. 

His fingers scoured every surface, inside and out, of every thing that might possibly be able to hide a camera. Nothing. Then he turned his attention to the bedroom. 

He spent an entirely enjoyable three hours running his hands over every surface in the flat. Once found, he divided his prizes based on the makes and models, working from the assumption that the newest and most expensive ones were from Mycroft's people. The man had always refused to deny himself the best in anything, especially if he wasn't personally footing the bill. 

As the jars filled, MI6 took an early lead and stayed ahead of the competition through the entire afternoon. Halfway through the process, Sherlock wondered if this act would in itself be sufficient to draw out MI5. He was confident, in the end, that he'd found them all, including the camera in John's old room. After all, they were effectively deaf and blind in Baker Street now that their equipment was marinating in the (likely) remains of a months-old chemistry experiment and wouldn't have the opportunity to replace it until Sherlock left and they could re-bug the flat. 

He searched his desk until he found an old pad of John's neon green post-it notes. On the top sheet he wrote, “Still second best. Must do better next time,” and stuck it to the top of the MI5 jar. Just to ensure they got the message, he labelled the jars “MI5” and “MI6” in black marker. 

He made himself a cup of tea and sat on the sofa and stared at his phone for a minute or so while his tea cooled. Then he texted John. 

_Coming over. SH_

As Sherlock slipped on his coat, his phone pinged. 

_M under the weather. Dinner tomorrow?_

Sherlock tamped down the niggle of unease that arose at the idea of Mary being unwell, then responded to John in the affirmative. 

~ + ~ 

**Monday, January 5**

John was baffled by his emotions on seeing Sherlock sitting with Mary, calmly chatting away in the kitchen of their flat as if the last two weeks hadn't happened. Or the last six months, for that matter. Happiness, relief, confusion and anger swirled in a multi-coloured fog that disorientated John for a moment. Then he forced himself past the emotional disorder, and removed his coat and scarf and carefully hung them on the hooks by the door. 

“How was your day?” Mary asked as he joined them. 

“The usual.” John gave her a quick kiss before taking the chair next to her. “Hi,” he said to Sherlock, who watched them with open curiosity, as if he’d never seen them kiss before. 

Mary held out her hand. “What?” John asked. She dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone, then turned the power off. John sighed; it was going to be one of _those_ conversations. 

“We’ve been busy,” Sherlock began, and foreboding entered the melee going on in John’s head. 

“Okay.” John turned to Mary. “I’m assuming you aren’t talking about doing the laundry.” 

“John—” she started. 

“We cleaned up your flat,” Sherlock interrupted. “We need to talk. I did mine this morning. Very _liberating_.” 

“How nice for you.” John ensured he expressed the expected amusement. 

Mary shrugged. “He insisted.” 

“There was no arm-twisting required, if I remember correctly,” Sherlock countered with a bit of a scowl. 

“Okay,” John replied, acquiescing to their united front against his caution. He was exhausted after a horrible day at the clinic and the last thing he wanted was a row, especially now that they had Sherlock back and John could stop worrying about him until his friend went off on another of his calamitous misadventures. “So what do you think the response will be?” 

“Oh, they’ll just re-bug it the next time you go out. I expect mine was within an hour of me leaving this afternoon.” Sherlock sipped his tea with a self-satisfied expression that John was pleased not to see on Mary’s face as well. 

At least one of them has some sense, he thought. “So, we’re going to have to keep doing this for how long before MI5 or 6 or whoever it is just get irritated and haul us off again? Not that the rest wouldn’t be nice, actually, after the week I've had. Comfy bed, three meals a day. All the peace and quiet you'd want. Pity about the interrogations, though.” 

Sherlock made one of his dismissive little waves that John always thought he would be horrified to know made him look just like his brother. “Oh, they won’t. They’re not really interested in you anyway.” 

“So our house was bugged for fun?” 

“That’s just them being what they think is thorough. It’s easier than doing anything really useful and it makes them feel productive.” 

“Glad to be of help to our security services overlords.” 

Mary laughed into her tea. 

There was a 'ping' from the cooker and Sherlock leapt to his feet. While John looked on, amazed, Sherlock carefully drew out a dish of lasagna. John turned to Mary, who looked on, bemused. “He said he wanted to help.” 

John poured the wine and Mary placed the bowl of salad on the table, and the three of them sat down to eat in a scene of such mind-bending normality, under the circumstances, that John thought he might be in a dream. Or a David Lynch film. 

“I made the salad dressing myself. From scratch,” Sherlock said with a hint of pride. 

John's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “Really?” He glanced at the salad. “I didn't know you could cook.” 

“I'm a graduate chemist; of course I know how to cook.” 

“I lived with you for two years and never once saw you make so much as tea or toast. So I guess that was just laziness, then,” John replied with a smirk. His fork resumed its journey to its destination. He recognised the recipe as one Mary made frequently, though Sherlock appeared to think that doubling the garlic would be a good idea. John wasn't looking forward to the consequences later that night, but held his tongue. 

They ate largely in silence. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between them to save the serious conversation for afters. 

When they were done and the dirty dishes waited in the sink, Sherlock didn't hesitate to dive right into things. “You're probably wondering what's going on.” 

John and Mary exchanged a look before turning their attention back to Sherlock. “Well, yeah, of course,” John replied for them both. 

“Firstly, I have to ask Mary, if in her travels she'd ever heard of Moriarty having any associates outside Europe.” 

Mary looked genuinely startled. “I'd never even heard of him before John told me about you and the suicide, and everything else.” 

“Oh.” Sherlock looked crestfallen. “Really? Nothing?” 

“Nope. I didn't work in Europe much back then. And after, well, just what everyone else knew. The Tower and the trial and all that. What was in the papers.” 

While Sherlock hummed in thought for a second, John allowed his tired mind to wander. He suppressed a laugh at their idea of after-dinner conversation: psychopathic killers, espionage, fake suicides and identity theft. But this was John's first chance to ask Sherlock the questions that had been floating around the edges of his consciousness for the last two weeks. “I think we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves here. I mean, what's been going on since Christmas?” 

“What do you mean? Nothing's happened. That's the problem. I haven't—” Sherlock paused and his confusion lifted. “Oh, I see what you mean. There isn't anything to tell. A deal was made, then revoked when that ridiculous video was out. Not that anything has been said _officially_.” 

“What's Mycroft's plan?” Mary asked, turning the conversation in a direction John had little interest in. 

“Wait a sec. Can we just go back a bit.” John turned to Sherlock, who was looking a bit put out for some reason. “You killed a man and MI6 was sending you off on some sort of punishment mission—” 

“Yes,” Sherlock interrupted with his “well obviously” voice. 

“And now they've brought you back—” 

“Yes.” 

“Sherlock, can you let me finish a sentence?” 

“Oh for heaven's sake, John. Just ask without all the recapping. We were all there, if memory serves.” 

John held his tongue for a moment, until his annoyance passed. “What's going to happen about Magnussen?” 

“Oh, I imagine Mycroft's dealing with that at his end. Nothing you need worry about.” 

Mary leapt in before John could reply. “You 'imagine'. You mean you haven't spoken to Mycroft?” 

Sherlock hesitated. “No,” he said slowly. 

John and Mary shared a stunned look. “What? Why not?” John asked, appalled. “I thought he was organising all this.” 

“Perhaps. But I appear to be on my own at the moment. Typical Mycroft, always hovering when he's nothing but a nuisance and when I actually need him for once he's nowhere to be found.” 

There was something behind Sherlock's words, something he wasn't telling them, and John didn't know whether to be angry that Sherlock was again withholding information that affected them all, or upset for Sherlock that he was being cut off from one of his principal support systems. 

“So no one's officially given you your orders?” Mary asked. 

Sherlock grimaced at the word “orders” and John couldn't help a small snort of amusement. 

“Well, they're not exactly difficult to guess. If you can believe what's in the festering sewer of our so-called press, the government have no idea who is behind the broadcast hacking, and have no idea how to proceed with finding out. My role, presumably, is to do the job that MI5 and MI6 appear to be incapable of. 

“Why?” John asked. 

“Why what? Why MI5 and MI6 are too inept to perform the job for which British taxpayers give them billions of pounds per year?” 

“No, why you?” 

“No idea.” Sherlock grinned. “It should be fun, though, don't you think? Come on, John. Moriarty! It should at least not be boring.” 

“So why are you asking for our help this time?” 

“What do you mean? You're my friends—” 

“I mean, last time you were up against Moriarty, you never told me what was really going on. You lied to all of us. Well, except Molly. And your homeless network. And probably Lestrade. Actually, you just lied to me and Mrs Hudson.” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Here we go—” 

“Yeah, sorry for bringing up the uncomfortable truth.” 

"Let it go,” Mary interrupted. “It was more than three years ago.” 

“No, I think this is important. Last time around with Moriarty, you and Mycroft created that ridiculous fake suicide plan. Yeah, yeah, I know why you did it, I get it.” John paused and was pleased to see the other two refrain from talking over him again. “What I want to know is, why are you involving us this time?” He pointed at Mary while holding Sherlock's eye. “Are you using Mary as a replacement for Mycroft?” 

“John, don't be stupid,” Mary interjected again. 

“No, I think it's a fair question. What's changed since then? He certainly doesn't trust me any more now than he did then. He didn't tell me anything about what he was planning with Magnussen.” 

Sherlock huffed and muttered, “Not this again,” under his breath. 

“The only thing that's different now is you.” John turned to Mary. “I know he respects you more than me. And yeah, with your background, I probably would, too. But the last thing we need is you getting more attention from MI5.” 

“Oh, MI5 doesn't care about Mary.” 

“Doesn't matter, anyway,” she added. 

John recoiled at her blasé attitude. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“They probably know all about me already.” 

“Not likely. I doubt you'd be sitting there if they did.” 

“Well, Mycroft has known who I really am since about half an hour after our first date, probably.” 

John glanced at Sherlock, who mirrored Mary's bemused expression at John's expense. “What?” 

Mary sighed. “When we were dating, Mycroft knew that Sherlock was alive and probably coming back to London.” 

“No probably about it,” Sherlock interjected. 

“He knew that whoever came into your life then would be in Sherlock's life when he came back. So obviously Mycroft had me checked out. He probably checked out every woman you dated since you two moved in together.” She glanced at Sherlock, who nodded. “Most definitely. Sarah was his favourite.” 

“Oh, that makes me feel special. No wonder he didn't come to the wedding,” she replied. 

John glanced between the two of them. “Uh huh. Okay.” 

Mary continued. “Mycroft's people would have found out about me, so he would have dug into it until he found it all. Everything.” 

Mary continued. “Mycroft's people would have found out about me, so he would have dug into it until he found it all. Everything.”

John didn't quite know what to think of the idea that Mycroft knew Mary's former name while John didn't. It made him uncomfortable.

“And obviously Mycroft doesn't have an issue with any of that or I wouldn't be here,” Mary said, then shrugged. “I have no idea why.”

“Really?” Sherlock asked, looking genuinely perplexed. “But then, you don't really know Mycroft.”

“Care to let us in on the secret?” John asked. 

“It's not relevant. And we have more important things to discuss than the labyrinthine games that Mycroft plays in his head to stay awake during Cabinet briefings.”

Mary laughed and John wished he could join in the fun. 

“Do you really think it's someone connected to Moriarty? Anyone could have put that video together.” Mary asked. “Though, taking over the entire broadcast system is a different story.”

“Indeed,” Sherlock replied. “The government is, of course, focusing on that aspect of things, in their usual stunning insistence on obsessing with the least important details.”

“A lot fewer people could do that than make the video, though.”

“True. And Moriarty does have form for blackmailing and manipulating people to do what he wants.”

John watched as his wife and best friend blithely discussed the possibility of there being more Moriarty associates active in Britain, as if they were weighing up the new season's fashions. He wasn't sure how to respond to any of it. 

“Do you think it might be connected to Magnussen?” John eventually asked.

Sherlock turned and gave John a chilling look. “You're like a dog with a bone. Let it go.” 

“Nope.” John tried to keep his tones neutral and even tried for a smile, but he didn't think he was very successful. “There's going to be fall-out from that. Regardless of them bringing you back.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and responded as if he was explaining something to a child. “It's obvious that I'm on probation. But by the time I sort out this 'Moriarty' situation Mycroft will have sorted something out on the Magnussen issue. Stop fussing, John. It's unbecoming,” Sherlock added in tones that would have done a Victorian matron proud.

John couldn't help himself; he let off a small chuckle and decided to leave it for the time being. It was obvious Sherlock wouldn't discuss it and now that the three of them were finally together again, the last thing he wanted was to send Sherlock off in a huff. 

“Now, seeing as you've barely given me a moment to speak with you banging on about _Magnussen_ , of all things, I haven't had the chance to ask you a question that's been on my mind all evening.” Sherlock paused for dramatic effect and John gave him his best “yes, well?” expression. “Aren't you even the slightest bit intrigued about who is behind that video?”

John felt Mary's eyes heavy on him as he pondered his response. Sherlock seemed surprised that John didn't immediately pick up on the game and was taking the question seriously. Eventually he sighed and acquiesced. “Yeah, of course I am. But am I looking forward to anything related to Moriarty in our lives again: no, I'm not. I've had more than a lifetime's worth of crazy from that fucking lunatic, thanks very much. His timing is really _shit_.”

“I'll be sure to pass on that assessment once I catch up to them.”

“What's your plan?” Mary asked. “What do you need us to do?”

John could tell that Sherlock was uncomfortable with either the question or the answer, which he did not give them until he'd paused for a few seconds. “I'm not sure.”

“You can't say it, can you?” John teased.

“Say what?”

“You don't know. You can't say that you don't know what to do next.”

“Don't be absurd, John. I'm more than willing to admit to my limitations. You make me sound like a maladjusted child. For example, I freely admit I know nothing about Assyrian art.” John and Mary shared a look, then burst out laughing. Sherlock's affront was entirely and obviously fake, which John considered a good sign. “Oh, shut up, the two of you,” Sherlock eventually said, in a poor attempt at feigned outrage.

“No, really. Where do we go from here?” John eventually asked as he wiped his eyes.

“I have some probably _very_ boring people to deal with first. Just what I need: more cut-rate Mycrofts in my life.”

~ + ~ 

“Well, that was less enlightening than I'd hoped,” John said after Sherlock left and he and Mary turned to the dinner clean-up.

“Maybe he really doesn't know what's going on. Not that that makes any sense,” she added, her attention drifting off as she methodically dried a plate. “And maybe if you hadn't wasted half the night with all the Magnussen questions. What was that all about?”

“I'm an accessory to that murder; I think I have the right to know what's going on.”

She shrugged. “If Sherlock isn't going to be charged, then I don't think you have anything to worry about. I'm more worried about Mycroft's disappearing act.”

“I don't know whether or not to believe that.”

Mary just gave a contemplative little hum in response and John knew to leave that thought with her. He sensed she had a much better grip on what might be going on with Mycroft, MI5 and all the rest of the SIS nonsense going on in the background.

“Sherlock's certainly excited about it all,” she eventually said.

“Yeah. Not thrilled to see that, actually,” John muttered as he attacked the lasagna dish with a scrub brush. “Jesus. How much cheese did you put in this?”

She chuckled. “You'd rather see him depressed? Bored? Trying to make up his own entertainments?”

John paused while he tried to corral the rampaging memories of anxiety and fear and excitement of those days, hunting Moriarty across London. Irene Adler. The great game, and then the fall. The exhilaration of watching Sherlock at his best, then (apparently) crashing. The horrors of the disappearance and the lies, and then looking back and seeing the mania that had seemed to drive Sherlock in those days. And the guilt of not having recognised the signs of impending destruction.

“I'd rather see him nowhere near anything to do with the man who sent snipers after me and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson for _leverage_ to make Sherlock kill himself as part of some stupid game of chicken.” John turned to her and forced the rising anxiety that Mary so often misinterpreted as anger out of his voice. “Do you want to deal with that? Right now?”

“Better that than Sherlock on his own in Eastern Europe, facing God only knows what.”

“Yeah, well, you weren't around then. You don't know what it was like.”

“You're right. But it can't be Moriarty himself. He's dead.”

“We thought Sherlock was dead for two years, too.”

“You think Sherlock _lied_ to you about Moriarty?” Mary looked scandalized and John couldn't tell if it was the idea of Sherlock lying to them she found shocking. He certainly hoped not; if so, she was delusional, because Sherlock lied to everyone all the time. “That's a bit much, don't you think?” she continued. “Why would he lie about Moriarty being dead?”

“If Mycroft told him to, he probably would. I can imagine MI5 wouldn't mind having the world think Moriarty's dead while they had him stashed somewhere. And you have to know they wouldn't be able to hang onto him; he'd escape eventually.”

Mary pondered the idea, then shrugged. “Maybe. And it could still be someone unrelated.”

“But if it isn't, and this is someone from his gang—” John didn't want to think about the consequences. The chaos. The trouble they'd have flushing them out. Whoever it was would probably know everything about what Sherlock and Mycroft had done to get rid of Moriarty and everything Sherlock did to take down his gang. And this might be someone who had survived, had beaten the brothers at their game, and John didn't want to think who might be able to do that.

John was torn between the urge to protect Sherlock, to help him find the culprit behind the broadcast hack that was obviously an attempt to provoke Sherlock into a chase that would bring him out into the open, and the need to step back and protect Mary and the baby. On one hand, Sherlock's success would hopefully buy him some sort of reprieve from the consequences of his killing Magnussen. On the other, the thought of dragging his family into another game like the last one made John feel ill. If it were just the two of them, Sherlock and him, there would be no question; he'd be at Baker Street right now. But he knew Mary would never submit to his protection if it meant leaving Sherlock vulnerable, especially without Mycroft working in the background.

“I don't want that in our life. Especially not now.”

“We don't have any choice, John.” She gave him a withering look that he knew meant she'd guessed at the horrible, traitorous idea lurking in the back of his mind. “I think you're just sensitive about Moriarty because he's the reason why Sherlock lied to you for all those years.”

“Uh, no, that's really not it.” He paused. “I want to know where Mycroft is in all this. Because I can't see Sherlock solving this if Mycroft's spending all his time at his club trying to save his own skin.”

“Mycroft being taken down doesn't help Sherlock,” Mary countered. She gave a mirthless little chuckle. “I can't believe I'm defending Mycroft Holmes. God, the world's really gone upside down, hasn't it?”

“Feels like it, yeah.”

Mary paused while she put the plates away. “He needed to get Sherlock away from whoever is coming after him. It wasn't just about Sherlock being punished for getting rid of that vermin.”

“Mycroft wouldn't have wanted to send him away.”

“But he did.”

They paused and John could feel them each emotionally step back a bit, unwilling to push the argument and upset the still-new accord they'd reached at the Holmes' on Christmas Day.

“I don't think he had any choice, John,” Mary whispered, almost as if to speak of Mycroft Holmes possessing any vulnerability would bring down thunderbolts onto their heads. “He's not Oz the Great and Powerful. I know Sherlock says he is but he's not. I don't think he ever has been, and I really don't think he is right now.”

John's exhaustion of earlier was catching up with him again, so he sat at the table and couldn't help dropping his head into his hands. “So what do we do next?”

Mary joined him and took one of his hands in hers. “We wait for Sherlock to tell us what he needs.”

“He needs Mycroft to get off his arse and help him. Much as I hate to admit it, we're not going to be much use getting information about hacking systems or espionage or anything like that.”

“Well, I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Unless he can find a way around whoever it was forced him into sending Sherlock away in the first place.”

John didn't answer right away; he was focusing on trying to keep his head above the waves of memories from that night: the anger, then the gunshot. The shock, the lights, the panic at the laser sights sweeping over them, the noise of the helicopter. The look on Mycroft's face as the SAS commander took Sherlock away. And then he remembered Mycroft's words from their meeting at the Diogenes on Boxing Day: “There are more sides to this game than you know, John. It doesn't pay to make assumptions”. _God_ , he thought, _he knew already what was going to happen; it had probably already started._ The thought made John even more tired.

Mary watched him and he couldn't tell if she was trying to figure out the puzzle, or was deciding whether or not to share what she'd guessed already, as if she were afraid of angering or panicking him. 

“From what I can tell, there's two possibilities. Whoever it is could be blaming Mycroft for what Sherlock did. Not being able to control him.”

“No sane person would expect anyone to control _Sherlock_ , of all people,” John scoffed. “It's not like Mycroft was responsible for him; Sherlock's an adult. Sort of.”

“As far as the security services are concerned, Mycroft was responsible for Sherlock; he was his handler and you're responsible for the people you run, especially when they go rogue like that.”

“Mycroft was _not_ Sherlock's handler.”

“Um, yeah, he was.”

“Sherlock hated all that spy stuff.”

“Sherlock hated taking orders from Mycroft. But he still did. What about that case you told me about? The one with the plans. You said Mycroft—”

“Yeah, okay, he was working for Mycroft, then,” John conceded. “Though Sherlock made me do all the work, you know.”

She laughed. “Sounds like him. The worse possibility is that someone high up thinks Mycroft was in on the plan to kill Magnussen.”

“Would Mycroft— God, of course he would.” The thought that Mycroft would want Magnussen dead—for his own sake, of course; he'd never have done it for theirs—raised the man a measure or two in John's estimation and erased a bit of his bitterness over Mycroft's defence of Magnussen at Baker Street the previous summer, on that horrible day of the visit to the drug den. “Do you think he did?”

Mary paused again, working on her answer. “I don't know. I don't know if he'd be willing to use Sherlock as a weapon that way. Put him in danger like that.”

John knew she didn't mean physical danger; it was obvious that Mycroft had no qualms about that. 

“Does any of it really matter, though?” Mary's soft-spoken words had a steel to them that John recognised. “He did that for us, John. And he knew what the consequences would be. He needs us now. That's all there is to it.”

John knew it should be that simple. And if it had been before Bart's and the fall, and if it hadn't been Moriarty, it would be. But it wasn't, and he didn't know how long he was going to be able to pretend to Mary that it was.

~ + ~

**Tuesday, January 6**

“Are you ever going to tell me where you were after Christmas?” Mrs Hudson watched as Sherlock rummaged through a cupboard, looking for a clean pair of nitrile gloves.

“I was in a secret MI5 facility being interrogated by a spy-cum-psychiatrist about why I murdered a prominent American businessman,” he muttered.

“Really, Sherlock. If you didn't want to tell me you only had to say.” She paused as she picked up one of the jars on the dining table. “What are these?” she asked as she peered through the chili sauce residue coating the inside of the jar.

Sherlock looked up from a drawer. “Cameras.”

“What?” She dropped the jar as if it were superheated. “Cameras? Why have you got—?” She glanced around the flat. “Are they spying on you again?” 

“Calm down, Mrs Hudson. I very much doubt they bothered to bug _your_ flat.” He paused after brandishing a pair of blue gloves. “Though perhaps I ought to take a look anyway.”

Mrs Hudson dropped onto the arm of John's chair and pulled her cardigan closed. “Do you really think—?” She shuddered. “You ought to speak to your brother about those horrible people. They're as bad as the press.” She paused and an expression crossed her face that indicated she was mustering her nerve about something. “Mr Chatterjee was wondering when you were going to give a statement. Well, we both are.”

Sherlock pulled on his gloves and began disassembling the equipment that covered most of the table.

Mrs Hudson continued, a hint of disaffection in her voice. “It's ridiculous, having to push through that crush just to get to my own front door. And the cafe's suffering, too. Driving his customers away.”

“Nope.”

“Sherlock—”

“I have nothing to say to the press, so there will be no statement.”

“You have to say something. They're never going to leave until you do.”

“Yes they will. Some actress will get married or divorced or pregnant—or something. And they'll go haring off after her, and you will once again have free and unfettered access to your bins and your own front door.” He turned in circles, looking at the various piles of clutter. “Did you move my anti-bacterial soap?”

“Of course not. You need to say something, or they'll just make up horrible lies and say it was you who made that video.”

Sherlock paused. Of course he'd already realised that that was one of the likely outcomes of his ongoing public silence. Not that he was overly concerned about the opinions of ordinary people, but the idiots at MI5 would likely believe anything they read in the papers and that particular lie would result in complications. He shrugged. “Trying to prevent idiots from believing nonsense is a Herculean task I'm unwilling to take on.”

“Well, whatever you think best, I suppose. She seemed far from convinced. “You really don't know who—?”

“I really don't.” The conversation was veering into territory he was unwilling to traverse with Mrs Hudson, so he resumed his search in his bedroom.

A few minutes later, finally successful in his quest, he returned to the kitchen. To his chagrin, Mrs Hudson still hadn't left; instead, she was staring down at the small crowd in the street below.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes.” He peered into a beaker, unable to remember the exact composition of the greenish residue at the bottom.”

“Who are those men?”

He sighed and asked without looking up, “Which men?”

“The ones just over there. Men in suits don't tend to loiter in the street, do they?”

Sherlock ambled across the flat, maintaining an air of nonchalance, to stand behind her. He followed her gaze and to his complete lack of surprise saw the two men she must have been talking about. They weren't making much of an effort to hide themselves. “MI5, presumably.” He returned to the kitchen.

“What have you done, Sherlock? I mean, MI5?”

“Well, they won't be Mycroft's people. Them you never see coming.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“And Mycroft's people don't need to chase me around. My 'fan club' has been keeping tabs on me and regularly posting my location on Twitter and Tumblr. That assistant of his is probably just following them from the comfort of Mycroft's underground lair.”

“Sherlock—”

“Very clever. Having members of the public doing your job for you, free of charge. I wonder how much money 'fans' save the Exchequer every year, spying on their fellow citizens, doing the security services' job for them—”

“Sherlock, really.”

He gave her a quelling look from across the room. “You don't want to know.”

“I think I have the right to.”

“No, you don't.” He turned back to the disassembly of his distillery. “And you really do not want to know. Trust me.”

“I— Well, that's me told, isn't it?” she said as she headed for the door. She paused. “Sherlock—”

“You _really_ do not want to know, Mrs Hudson.”

She grimaced and gave a half-hearted conciliatory gesture that he didn't acknowledge, then she returned to her flat.

For a brief moment, Sherlock pondered the possibility of leaving Baker Street. For Mrs Hudson's sake. Horrified, he instantly discarded the notion, but a sense of unease hovered in the back of his mind for the rest of the day as he deconstructed some of his pre-Christmas experiments.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, January 7**

Sherlock spoke as soon as the call was picked up. “Lestrade.”

There was a sigh at the other end. “What do you want, Sherlock? I'm busy.” In the background he heard traffic noise and voices. 

“I want a case, Lestrade. Why else would I be calling?”

“You are aware I no longer run cases.” It wasn't a question, though Sherlock had, in fact, forgotten.

“So? And if that's so, why are you out on a case right now?”

“I'm not on a case.”

“Then why are you outdoors in the middle of the night?”

There was a pause and another sigh; he heard a scuffling sound, then Lestrade's voice rumbling in the distance, unintelligible but almost physically tangible. Lestrade had pressed his phone to his chest and was speaking to someone else. A woman, by the pitch of the responding voice.

“Sherlock—”

“Are you on a date?”

“That's none of your business. And I can't bring you in on cases I don't run.”

“Make one of your people give me a case, then. Dimmock. He's not entirely useless when he shuts up and does what he's told.” He paused and heard Lestrade take a breath. Sherlock rushed to continue before the man had the opportunity to become even more contradictory. “This is actually better than before. You can make your people give me cases and because you're now in charge you don't have to lie to the higher-ups about my involvement because now you're the higher-ups.”

There was a pause and Sherlock suspected that Lestrade was counting in his head in an attempt to prevent himself from yelling. “Okay, okay. Jesus.” There was another sigh. “Don't make me regret this, Sherlock. And you're going to have to be on your best behaviour. No, better than your best behaviour—a new standard of superior behaviour, or I'm cutting you off.”

“Cross my heart.”

Sherlock heard a choked-off sound that might have been the beginning of a laugh. “I can let a couple of DIs know I'm okay with you helping them _if they want_. And no, I won't be making the offer to Dimmock, so you can forget about turning him into your dogsbody again.”

“Fine. He's an idiot, anyway. Who did they promote into your old job?”

“Elliot. You don't know her.”

“Her?”

“Yes, Sherlock. Welcome to the 21st century. Women are allowed to be DIs, whether you like it or not.”

“I won't work with a woman, Lestrade.”

“Well, I apologise for not keeping that front of mind when making my decision.”

“Sarcasm, Greg. The lowest form of humour.”

“Greg?”

“Yes? Oh, did I get it wrong again? Go, on, what is it?”

“No, no. Greg's fine. It's— that's the first time in ten years you've got it right.”

“It won't happen again.”

“Course not.” His tone was a mix of rueful and amused. “Look, Sherlock, I have to go.”

“Of course. One thing, though. I was— Would you like to meet for a drink?”

“Are you asking me on a date, Sherlock Holmes?” Sherlock heard the mystery female with Lestrade laugh in the background. Definitely not Donovan, then.

“Don't be an idiot—” The laughter at the other end cut him off and he fumed a bit as he listened. “Very funny, Lestrade. There's something I wish to discuss with you and it would be best done in person.”

“Come on, admit it, you just miss me.”

Sherlock ignored this further attempt to get his goat. “Tomorrow, nine o'clock. Your usual den of iniquity.”

“Sure. See you then.” Lestrade resumed laughing as he rang off and Sherlock couldn't help a thin smile. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Lestrade laugh. The sense of something—satisfaction, perhaps—was surprisingly pleasing.

Sherlock lay back on the sofa and stared at his ceiling. How was he to keep himself occupied without cases? He'd missed the post-Christmas rush on familial discontent during his incarceration, leaving his public practice currently non-existent. The combination of boredom and too much to think about was driving him mad.

Mycroft certainly wouldn't be giving him any juicy little puzzles any time soon, seeing as he was apparently fixated on saving his own hide. Sherlock's reflexive 'selfish bastard' was half-hearted, though. He'd known in the back of his mind that things were likely far from rosy for Mycroft; Sherlock didn't believe it stretched the imagination to think that his former friends in the CIA were hovering on the boundaries, waiting for an opportunity to cart Mycroft off to some client third world country and torture every bit of intelligence out of that capacious brain of his. Sherlock felt what he assumed was a twinge of something resembling guilt—not even almost-guilt, perhaps proto-guilt—at his role in his brother's predicament. 

He wanted drugs.

He needed a case to distract him from wanting drugs.

He wanted John there. He wanted to go back in time, to the point where it had all begun to go so horribly, unaccountably wrong, and smack himself in the head repeatedly until he noticed the one detail that would have told him that there were no vaults under Appledore.

~ + ~

**Thursday, January 8**

The next evening, Sherlock arrived at the pub, not Lestrade's usual haunt, but one identified by their code phrase 'den of iniquity', arranged years ago to avoid Mycroft's interference. It was next to impossible that Sherlock hadn't been followed, but at least it was unlikely the place had been pre-bugged before their arrival. Greg would be able to identify any likely-looking strangers, and Sherlock had long ago learnt how to identify agents on sight.

Sherlock pulled out his phone and checked his inbox. Still no messages from John, Mary or Mycroft. He heard a quiet throat clearing behind him. “Yes, what?” he said without looking up.

“If you're busy or something, I can take these back to the Yard and refile them.” Lestrade held up a supermarket carrier bag containing a dozen or so fat folders.

Sherlock fought down panic and kept his voice cool. “Don't you dare.” The two of them stared at one another for a moment before Lestrade dropped the bag next to Sherlock's almost-empty glass. “No date tonight?”

“Still none of your business.” Lestrade pointed at Sherlock's glass. “Another?” Sherlock shrugged. Lestrade pointed at the bag. “Don't make me take that to the bar.” Sherlock gave him his most brilliant fake smile, then scowled. Lestrade headed off to the bar and returned with their drinks as Sherlock was rummaging through the first file. “Hey, hey. Not here.” Lestrade trapped Sherlock's hand in the file as he slammed it closed and attempted to shove it back in the bag. “No one wants to look at crime scene photos in a pub.”

“I do.”

“Yeah, well. It'll be a treat for when you get home. Belated birthday present.”

“You're Father Christmas, you are,” Sherlock grumbled. “Another two hours of idleness and my brain may very well drop below critical mass from lack of use.”

“A risk I'm willing to take.”

“You would; it's not your brain.”

“Thank god for small mercies.” 

While Lestrade checked a text, Sherlock looked around at the clientele. It was quiet, especially for a Thursday evening. Lestrade had given the place a casual, seemingly uninterested look-over when he'd returned from the bar and hadn't indicated there was a problem, so he obviously recognised the few other drinkers, none of whom were sitting nearby anyway.

When Lestrade finally sat, he pointed at the bag. “Cold cases is all I can give you right now.” Sherlock shrugged again; he'd already realised it was unlikely Lestrade would be able to bring him on to new cases for the foreseeable future. “Four cases. A double shooting in Golders Green, 2003. Mother and son. Never even came up with a suspect. The two most boring, well-liked people on earth, apparently. A jewellery shop owner shot in the back of his shop in New Bond Street in 2001. You'll see a familiar DS's name on that one.” Lestrade gave him a rueful smile. “The DI insisted it was just a burglary gone wrong. The DS didn't agree. Anyway, the last two I threw in with no expectation you'll be able to solve them.”

“Really, Lestrade. Ye of little faith. And memory, apparently.” Sherlock tried to peer into the edges of the files through the opening of the bag. Lestrade pulled it across the table away from him.

“At least five different DIs have taken a run at each of these, but no one's been able to make head or tail of them. First is a real winner; think you'll really appreciate it.” Sherlock snorted in disdain. “A girl disappeared in 1971. Eighteen years old, down from Leeds to visit a school friend. At least twenty witnesses saw her get off the train; never seen again. Her handbag was found in an alley near Lord's a week later, one side covered in blood same type as hers. Over the next couple of weeks, the rest of her clothes were found all over London, each with blood on them. Never found any remains, though. The Met scoured the city, dragged the river. Nothing. Had half the police in the country looking for her at one point. Never found so much as a fingernail.”

Sherlock pondered the possibilities of the last case while Lestrade took a long pull from his pint. He had four possible scenarios and he hadn't even seen the file yet.

“Last one's my favourite cold case, ever. There's a bit of a story to this one.” Lestrade settled back in his seat. “Two neighbours in Wimbledon, 1967. One has a dog, named Smith.”

“Odd name for a dog.”

“The owner's name, Mr Clever. Next door neighbour's a keen gardener. Named Jones. Yeah, really,” Lestrade interjected at the look on Sherlock's face. “Smith lets his dog run all over the neighbourhood. Keeps getting into people's yards, doing his business all over the place, digging up people's flowers. Generally a nuisance. Jones complains; gets no-where. This goes on for months. Back and forth across the fence, other neighbours taking sides. A real to-do. Anyway. Jones is a widower, lives alone. Daughter lives in Croydon, comes to visit once a week, regular as clockwork. She's the only other person with a key to his house.

“Smith's married; it's just him and the wife as the kids are all grown and gone. The house has two keys only; one for Smith and one for the wife. One day Mrs Smith goes out to do the shopping; she's gone about an hour and a half. She comes home, finds her husband in the kitchen, a bullet here.” Lestrade taps himself in the middle of the forehead. “Dead as can be, sitting up in one of the chairs in the middle of the kitchen floor. She calls the police, they come 'round, get the story of the neighbour who keeps complaining about the dog—”

“The police go to Jones' house and find him dead as well, killed in apparently the same manner, down to sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor on a chair.” Sherlock interrupted, bored.

“You know this one, then.”

“No, it's obvious that that's the sort of thing you would find 'interesting'.”

“Sorry my cases don't meet your deducting needs.” 

“Apology accepted. Though do better next time.”

“I can always take them back.”

Sherlock's hand crept across the table and secured one of the bag's handles. “No, that's fine. I'm sure they can keep me occupied for an afternoon.” Lestrade smiled.

They drank in reasonably companionable silence for a few minutes, Sherlock pretending he didn't notice Lestrade's examination from across the table.

“So. What did you need to see me about?” Lestrade finally asked, sliding his glass away from his folded hands.

“You're in contact with Mycroft. What is he doing?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't be absurd. He'd have been summoning you within an hour of returning to London.”

Lestrade shrugged. “You do realise I have a job that doesn't entail jumping to attention every time one of you two snaps his fingers, yeah? And a life.”

“Ah, yes. The mystery woman. Who is she?”

“None of your business. Never will be.”

They stared at one another across the table; Sherlock knew that Lestrade would break first, so was willing to wait him out. To his complete lack of surprise, the other man leant back in his chair and crossed his arms. “What did you drag me out here for, Sherlock? I know it wasn't these.” He pointed to the carrier bag still parked between them on the table.

“I need to know what the Met's doing about the Moriarty video.”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, you're a font of information tonight, aren't you?' Lestrade pushed his chair out and made to stand. Sherlock called his bluff. “You could at least put in the effort to come up with a believable lie.”

Lestrade shrugged. “Not my division until a body shows up. Commercial crime, hacking into display company systems, broadcast signals: not serious crime, so not my division.”

“This is no ordinary hacking. And the absence of a 'serious crime' didn't keep you from grabbing the Tower break-in, Pentonville—”

Lestrade held up a hand and Sherlock stopped at the sight of his sour grimace. “Even if I wanted this, I'd never be allowed near it. You want information, talk to your brother.”

Sherlock couldn't help a sneer. How could the man be so dense, still, after all these years of working with Sherlock?

“Leave off the sighing and flouncing, would you?” Lestrade paused to smile at Sherlock's deepening frown. “Look. If I knew anything I'd tell you. Even if our division was involved, which they're not, I'd never be allowed anywhere near it. And if they tried to give it to me I'd fight it. It's a political case and they're the worst. Any copper can tell you that.”

“Why would they want you to not tell me anything? I'm supposed to be working on this idiotic case and no one's giving me any data!”

“Calm down, all right.” Lestrade glanced around with a placating gesture like he was trying to quiet a child in the supermarket.

“Stop telling me to be calm,” Sherlock hissed, leaning across the table. “My life could very well depend on solving this—”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I. Do not. Know. Anything. And no, I'm not exactly thrilled about that, either.”

Sherlock allowed himself to be somewhat mollified by this. “I thought you didn't want to be involved?”

“Not knowing a bloody thing about what's going on is a hell of a long way from not being involved. Never know what's coming down the road, do I? Can't defend myself. Bloody politics.” Lestrade toyed with his pint glass, staring at the dregs of his beer.

“But you're in contact with Mycroft?”

“Yeah, he reached out.”

“You just said you didn't know what he was doing.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake. You think _he_ tells me anything?”

“Ah. He wants you to act as go-between.”

“If we can be _discreet_ about it, yeah. So no more temper tantrums in pubs.”

“I was not— Oh, all right. Yes, I was angry. But not without cause—”

“Spare me.” Under the words, Sherlock heard 'Bite me,' and he smiled. It was lovely to have Lestrade back. The man had been correct the night before: Sherlock had missed him.

Sherlock stalled by staring at his whiskey for a few moments, swirling the glass around to catch the light in the liquid. “So what have people been saying about the video?”

Lestrade sat again and appeared to re-settle. “What people?”

“The public. I imagine there were a million 999 calls that morning.”

“Probably. Like I said: not my division.”

“You must have heard something.”

“Twitter not being helpful?” Lestrade gave one of his knowing smiles, then finished his pint. “That's me off. Got a meeting at eight tomorrow.” He winced.

“Middle management not to your tastes, then?”

“Middle management's just fine, thank you. I'll take the occasional eight o'clock meeting over chasing villains down alleys in the middle of the night, any time.” He pulled his coat on as Sherlock drained the last of his whiskey.

They made their way towards the door and Lestrade gave a tiny nod to a woman seated in a back corner, half hidden in the dark. Despite her hair being pulled back and the addition of reading glasses, she was instantly recognisable as Mycroft's Sloaney assistant of the constantly migrating names.

“When did she get here?”

“About five minutes after me. She's a regular.”

Sherlock stopped outside the door of the pub to button up his coat. “Really? She lives in _this_ neighbourhood?” He glanced around them. “Mycroft needs to pay his people better.”

“You're welcome, by the way.”

“Very funny, Lestrade.” Sherlock set off for the Tube station; he heard the beginnings of a chuckle as Lestrade walked away in the other direction.

When Sherlock arrived home he opened the first folder on the pile. A standard 1990s-era Met case file, with one exception. There was a small slip of paper clipped to the inside of the folder, the only contents a name: Deborah Oppenheimer, written in a familiar scrawl.

Sherlock tossed the bag of files onto John's chair, and laughed.

~ + ~

**Friday, January 9**

Sherlock glared at the empty cab stand. He'd stepped off the train less than a minute ago and he already hated Oxford.

Oxford was Mycroft's town. Or had been, back in the dark ages. He imagined a proto-Mycroft, back in the days when his suits had only two pieces and his hair had still been its natural ginger, scurrying between the colleges, ferreting out the powerful to suck up to. Sherlock sighed, then collared a harassed-looking mother pulling a pair of young girls into the station and asked for directions. She pointed vaguely off to the left, and Sherlock pulled out his phone and looked up the address. While he waited for Google Maps to load, a cab pulled in to the stand and he nimbly jumped in the back, to the consternation of an elderly couple who'd been waiting.

“Sorry. Late for a doctor's appointment,” he said out the window as the cab pulled away.

Doctor Deborah's house was rather disappointing, Sherlock thought as he walked up the path to the front door. It was large-ish, yellow-ish, Edwardian-ish, and entirely nondescript. It looked like the kind of place that would be owned by a pair of striving early middle-aged chartered accountants, not a lesbian couple with links to the worlds of espionage and particle physics. But then, perhaps that was the point. Perhaps chartered accountants lived in houses that strove to appear as if their owners were deviants who dabbled in the underworld.

Sherlock was about to press the doorbell when he noticed a small, engraved brass sign next to it: _Patient Entrance at the Rear_. Rear of what, he wondered. Why couldn't people be specific? He pressed the doorbell anyway. And then again a minute later when no one appeared. And a few more times over the next five minutes.

How rude, he thought as he lit a cigarette and checked his watch. He'd arrived on time. Doctor Deborah could have made an effort to do the same.

When his cigarette was almost gone and he was contemplating whether or not to light another one, he heard gravel crunching underfoot around the corner of the house. Doctor Deborah appeared, a look of annoyance on her face.

“Are you blind, illiterate or an ignoramus?” she offered as her only greeting.

“I knew you'd come looking for me eventually.” He stepped up to the front door and waited for her to open it.

“Where do you think you're going? The office is this way.” She turned and headed back from where she'd come. She didn't look back to see if he was following, and Sherlock eventually ambled along the gravel path that circled the house.

There was a Mercedes parked in the drive. Not a new model, but a Mercedes just the same. Through the rear window Sherlock noticed a fast-food wrapper on the floor of the back seat as he walked past, then followed Doctor Deborah into the basement of the house.

She led him into a small waiting area with a pair of comfortable-looking armchairs.

“No magazines?”

“Lord, no,” she muttered as she pulled out a key card and swiped it against a sensor by the side of another door, then entered an eight-digit code that she carefully ensured Sherlock couldn't see. He smiled.

They passed through to the office proper and Sherlock was confronted with the most recent in his life's series of psychiatrist's offices. With the exception of the art on the walls, it was entirely unremarkable. Just like Doctor Deborah seemed entirely unremarkable until she opened her mouth. 

Sherlock looked for the most likely hiding places for the cameras. When he turned to face her, Doctor Deborah had her Inquisitive Sparrow expression on again. She switched on a pair of lamps before taking one of the chairs in the middle of the room. 

“Short of building a Faraday cage around the house, I've done what I can to minimise the chance we'll be snooped on. No promises, though.”

“Mycroft'll have you bugged to the eyeballs.”

She murmured something unintelligible as she pulled her phone out of her pocket and appeared to turn it off, then placed it on the low table in front of her. She pointed at the chair across from her. “Sit.”

“No sofa? There's that illusion shattered.” He sat.

“I'm having trouble imagining you with illusions. Not since you were about four years old, anyway.”

He stared at the painting hanging behind her desk. “Is that a Schiele?”

Deborah turned to glance at the painting in question. “Yes.”

“Has it resulted in a higher or lower suicide rate among your patients?”

She let off one of her barking laughs. “No change detected so far. But then, suicide doesn’t much factor into the deaths of my patients.”

“Is death a hazard of being your patient?”

“I prefer to think of it as correlation, rather than causation.”

He chuckled, then shifted in the chair. At least it was comfortable. “What do you have for me, Doctor?”

“So, we're skipping the 'getting-to-know-you' stage?” They gave each other wan smiles over the bad attempt at a joke. “Sorry. Professionally speaking, I don't have anything for you. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how this little enterprise is going to play out.”

“You mean to tell me you've never done this before? Isn't there some sort of manual?”

“Nope.” She gave him the beginning of a grin.

“Oh good. We can make up our own rules as we go along.” He returned the grin and she laughed.

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's Mycroft been up to this week? Find out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/15693580).


	2. I was standing six inches away when the back of his head flew off

**Saturday January 10**

_I need your file on JM.  
SH_

_You've seen it already.  
M_

_I need the rest of it what you didn't share.  
SH_

_There is no more.  
M_

_Stop stalling, I need the rest of it.  
SH_

_There is no more. How many times do I have to tell you?  
M_

_You tortured him for weeks.  
SH_

_Torture is such an unpleasant word. And?  
M_

_There has to be more. Not even your people are that incompetent.  
SH_

_If you 'know' there's more, you must already know what it is.  
M_

_You've had one of your minions update the profile. I need it.  
SH_

_I have no idea to what you're referring.  
M_

_I need it.  
SH_

_I'm crushed to be unable to help, then.  
M_

_You and the rest of your fellow travellers brought me back now I need the data to solve this.  
SH_

_Why have you suddenly changed your mind?  
M_

_About what?  
SH_

_For thirty years you've demanded I leave you alone. Now that I am, you complain. Make up your mind, Sherlock.  
M_

_I need this data.  
SH_

_But I have nothing to give you, so you'll have to fulfil your needs elsewhere.  
M_

_You do want me dead, glad to see you finally being honest about something.  
SH_

_Always such melodrama. I'm sorry I cannot help you, Sherlock. Good luck.  
M_

_I need that data Mycroft.  
SH_

_I'm sure you think you do.  
M_

Sherlock stared at the final text from his brother. Now he thought of it, it was the longest text conversation he'd ever had with Mycroft; the man was notorious for hating to take the effort to use his thumbs. Sherlock wondered if he was at his ridiculous club for social mutes and couldn't be bothered to get off his fat arse in order to call and be smug at Sherlock via his usual medium.

At least Mycroft's refusal had confirmed his suspicions: the man was under threat and was tossing everything and everyone overboard, even his brother, in an attempt to keep his own head above water. Sometimes Sherlock hated being right.

He tipped over so that he was laying prone on the sofa and stared at the ceiling as he began to enumerate his options.

He had data. Some data. Data from the game he and Moriarty had played years before with silly puzzles, human bombs and bad pseudo-flirting. There was the data he'd unconsciously absorbed while fighting to save his own life and the lives of his friends. Data that Mycroft had shared as they'd planned their response, the price Sherlock had had to pay for Mycroft's help with Baskerville. And the data Sherlock had accumulated during the two years he'd spent fulfilling that debt repayment. But was it the right data?

Sherlock leapt to his feet and turned on the kitchen light. He dove into his old files. _Start at the beginning_. He paused as he pulled out both sets of notes from the Carl Powers cases. _Always start at the beginning when building a profile._

As Sherlock rumbled through the stacks of files where he'd kept all his research and case notes, he found himself humming. It was the waltz he'd composed for John and Mary's wedding; to keep his mind occupied as he searched, he transposed it to different keys.

He sorted the extricated files into stacks and when he was done there were three measly piles of paper. But most of the data was already in his head. And he had sources other than Mycroft he could go to. And he wasn't alone in the hunt; John and Mary would help. While Mary was no Mycroft, she had a native cunning which, combined with her training and experience, would still be valuable. And John. John would never let him down. Not after the Magnussen business.

Sherlock recoiled at the thought of working on his own again; he recognised now that he needed John, needed his stability to keep Sherlock on course. He never wanted another disaster like the months after the wedding; trying to go it alone had turned into a train wreck, he was willing to admit now.

Sherlock realised he had a plan (sort of), a team (most likely) and a place to start. If Doctor Deborah, Mycroft and MI5 weren't going to give him the data he needed to solve the puzzle and build a pathway out of his current dilemma, he was just going to have to go out and damned well get it himself.

~ + ~

**Sunday, January 11**

When Sherlock arrived that evening, John was glad to see he was a little more subdued than the last time they'd seen him. Sherlock ate little at dinner, which wasn't unusual, but he was quiet, which definitely was. John followed Mary's lead and held back his questions until they'd finished eating. It seemed that this was going to be one of their new traditions: espionage for afters.

When they were settled on the sofa, Mary dove straight in. “So, you've spent a week on the case; what were you able to find out?”

Sherlock seemed a bit taken aback by the directness of her question. But then, Sherlock was accustomed to being in the drivers' seat in most conversations (excepting those with his brother) and so probably hadn't expected to be pounced on in quite this way, John thought.

“Not a lot,” Sherlock finally replied, with considerable hesitation. It was obvious he didn't like admitting to his lack of progress.

“What's Mycroft up to?” Mary's second question brought a scowl to Sherlock's face.

John wasn't surprised by Mary zeroing in on Mycroft's continuing absence from the field of play. To his surprise, Sherlock only shrugged and John knew then that what Mary had said about Mycroft being under some kind of threat from someone else must be correct. John remembered how on Boxing Day the man had appeared to be at the end of his rope, likely from worry as much as exhaustion.

“Saving himself,” Sherlock eventually replied. “Lestrade has seen him. And either he's significantly improved his skills at lying, or Mycroft isn't sharing any information with him.”

“So no one knows what's going on. Great,” John interjected before Sherlock could waste half an hour of their evening going off on one of his rote litanies of complaint against Mycroft and his selfishness, which never accomplished anything beyond giving John a headache.

“When did you see Greg?” Mary asked.

“Thursday. Did you know he's got himself a girlfriend? They were out _very_ late Wednesday night.”

“You're stalking Greg? Well that explains a few things,” John chortled. “Effective use of your time, there.”

Sherlock scowled at him again and John knew that this time it was probably fake. “Of course not, don't be ridiculous. As if I need to _follow_ people, like some common Met undercover plod. No, he was out with a woman when I called him Wednesday night, and he admitted he wasn't on a case, so what else could he have been doing? And he was quite defensive about it the next night,” Sherlock added in his familiar “well, that's that solved” tones which John thought a bit much.

“If you interrupted him on a date, you're lucky he's still talking to you.”

Sherlock turned to Mary and John grinned at the crude attempt at shunning while Sherlock spoke pointedly to her. “I wanted to talk to him because Mycroft would have summoned him after the video broadcast. Seeing as my brother apparently believes he must pretend as if he doesn't know me in order to save his own hide, he will have promoted Lestrade to principal minion for the foreseeable future. Lestrade, of course, misinterpreted my request for a meeting and brought me cold cases instead of information.”

“That's good. I mean, the cold cases, not the no information.” John ignored the attempt at a withering look Sherlock sent his way. “I mean, if you're not allowed to work Met cases anymore.”

Sherlock paused again and tried to stare John down a bit before replying. “He claimed to not know what Mycroft was up to. And why would I waste my time on cold cases? They're not going to get any colder.”

“So, Mycroft's out of the picture. What's Greg going to do?” Mary asked.

“You'd think the Met would assign him. Who else are they going to get to work with you on the Moriarty case?” John asked.

Sherlock toyed with the coffee cup in his hand. “He said he doesn't want it. 'Political cases are the worst', he said. I think he's getting too comfortable behind that desk, letting other people run around and do all the real work. Mycroft's influence, probably.”

“Yeah, when you're fifty-two, let's see how much you like chasing around London in the middle of the night,” John countered. He thought Greg probably had a good point. He couldn't imagine that if you were a Met officer, working with MI5 would be much fun. From what John had seen of military Intelligence, they treated soldiers as disposable, mindless grunts, and did little other than bring “intelligence” that got a lot of good men killed for little or no gain. So his sympathies were somewhat with Greg, not wanting to deal with public school attitudes. Mycroft provided enough of that for anyone. The men who'd interviewed John on Boxing Day had been superficially polite enough, but had made no effort to hide their disdain.

“I'm going to talk to Molly, as well. Moriarty might have let something slip about his organisation while he was 'not my boyfriend', as she began referring to their relationship as soon as she discovered he was a murdering psychopath.”

“That doesn't seem likely,” Mary said.

“The key to this case is going to be a tiny piece of data. A reference. An allusion. Something that seems irrelevant. And one of Molly's great gifts is her focus on the trivial.”

John decided to let that statement pass without comment for the sake of retaining some degree of harmony in the room. His reaction must have showed on his face, though, as Sherlock continued. “That wasn't meant as an insult, John. In this matter, she may very well hold the key without even knowing it.”

“Okay, then.” John felt a little better for Molly's sake, but he still wondered at how useful interviewing her could be. It seemed almost like an act of desperation, especially considering this early stage in the investigation. For Sherlock to be clutching at straws like this wasn't a good sign.

“So, if you're working for MI5 on this, why aren't they helping you? They must have access to all sorts of data. They have to know by now who hacked into the broadcast systems.” In his mind, John blessed Mary for being willing to ask the difficult questions this time around.

Sherlock turned to her and didn't answer for a few seconds. “Assumptions will hardly advance our cause in this case.” His expression shifted back to his more usual veneer of bored pique and he gave another of his affected little hand-waves. 

“No one is being particularly forthcoming. I'll dig it out, though.”

Watching Sherlock verbally ducking and weaving to avoid giving them any details of what he'd done for the last few days, John couldn't put aside his growing concern. Over those same few days, John hadn't managed to resolve his own feelings on the situation Sherlock was now in: gladness that the security services weren't planning on immediately throwing away Sherlock's extraordinary mind and talents on a suicide mission, against the frustration of seeing his friend so set back so early on in his efforts to complete his assignment. 

Mary glanced at John out of the corner of her eye and John was glad to see he wasn't hallucinating Sherlock's unexpected reticence. “So what do you want us to do?” he asked.

Sherlock seemed surprised that someone had asked, which John thought was odd. After all, wasn't that why the man was there?

“I'm not sure. Not at the moment. It's all very cryptic.”

“I thought cryptic was your favourite thing,” John remarked.

“Ordinarily, yes.” Sherlock's tone was contemplative rather than upset. John knew that this was preferable, but it didn't get them any closer to finding out who was responsible for the video.

“Do you still have your old notebooks?”

“What?” The sudden change of subject startled John. “Yeah.”

“I don't imagine there's anything in them that I don't remember, considering your limited observational skills,” Sherlock muttered, more to himself than to them. 

“That's the Sherlock we all know and love. Kicking people same time as he's demanding their help.” John hoped that sounded less snarky _outside_ his head than it had on the inside. Judging by Mary's expression, he guessed not. “You sure you want to read them?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“It's not just stuff I put in the blog.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I promise you, I have no interest in your love-lorn maunderings about the boring teacher, or the one with the frankly astonishing nose.”

“There's stuff in there about you.”

Sherlock stared at him for a second. “Of course there is. What else do you have to write about?”

John paused and Mary choked off a little laugh. Then Sherlock caught up. “Ah, you think I'm going to be upset when I read your whingeing about how hard done by you always thought you were?”

“No. More like my opinions on what arsehole you were eighty percent of the time.”

“Like I've never heard _that_ complaint before.”

John opened his mouth to shoot off a snappy response, then shut it. When Sherlock later came to him in a huff, John would be able to say he'd been warned, in front of a witness. Sometimes Sherlock needed to suffer the consequences of his stubbornness, the same as everyone else. “Yeah, sure, I can bring them by tomorrow. Oh, no, can't tomorrow. How about Tuesday evening? I can come into town after my shift.”

“Why don't I just take them home tonight?”

“They're not here; they're in our storage locker.”

“You tossed away all our work?”

“No, not 'tossed away'. In Twickenham.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I figured I'd never need them again after you faked your death. Consider yourself lucky I didn't burn them.”

Sherlock snorted in derision. “You'd never have. You're much too sentimental.”

“I meant you're lucky I didn't burn them after you came back.”

Startled, Sherlock gave him one of his sideways, wary looks and John grinned. “Gotcha.”

~ + ~

Later that night, as he and Mary were getting ready for bed, John muttered to himself, almost unconsciously, “You need to stop believing everything my brother tells you.”

Mary leant around the bathroom door. “What?”

John started. “Uh, nothing.” He paused and stared at his reflection in the mirror, toothbrush in his hand and startled expression on his face. “Something Mycroft said.”

“When were you talking to Mycroft?”

“Boxing Day.”

“Oh.” She turned and walked away, then called back through the doorway, “You need to stop believing everything Mycroft says, you know.”

“Yeah, ” he answered as he proceeded to clean his teeth. “Maybe,” he added to himself under his breath.

~ + ~

**Monday, January 12**

As Sherlock left the flat that afternoon, he was pleased to see that the former throngs of press hovering on the pavement of Baker Street had further diminished. The shrinkage had begun the previous week as the Moriarty one-day wonder died down. Now all he saw were a few freelancers desperate enough to continue wasting their time, a few people he recognised as being part of Anderson's tribe of oddballs, and his usual MI5 surveillance. The former he was able to dodge easily; the latter he ignored, as usual. 

When he arrived at the Bart's morgue, Molly was just beginning an autopsy. He watched in admiration as she ran an expert scalpel incision from the neck to navel of a portly, middle-aged man. As she retracted the skin and layers of subcutaneous fat, he cleared his throat to let her know he was about to speak. 

“What is it, Sherlock?” she asked without taking her eyes from what her hands were doing.

“I wanted to ask a favour.”

She glanced up for a second before turning her eyes back to her instrument tray. “What do you need?”

“Well. First I have to explain something. About why I was away after Christmas.”

“I know already.”

“Lestrade told you.”

“Um. Yes. He did.” She paused while she gently re-arranged the body's upper intestine to get it out of her way. “He said you wouldn't be coming back this time. Probably. Unless your—”

“Unless my brother managed to pull off one of his bureaucratic conjuring tricks. Or blackmailed the Queen, or something.” She giggled nervously and Sherlock realised he was nervous, as well, which puzzled him as there was no one in his life less nerve-inducing than Molly Hooper.

“Molly.”

“Yes.”

“I was wondering—”

“Yes.”

“I was wondering, firstly, if you would let me finish my question.”

“Sorry.” She looked up, not appearing to be very sorry and for some reason the sight of her smiling at him in an uncharacteristically non-soppy manner lightened his heart a little. “And?”

He tried a mock glare on her and she neither spontaneously combusted nor broke into tears, which he considered progress. “Would you like to go for dinner?”

The shock on her face almost caused him to laugh, but she recovered with admirable speed and her expression shifted to caution. “Why?”

 _I knew there was a clever girl under all that drippy nonsense_ , he thought to himself and he was gladdened to see it.

“Is this about— him?” The hesitation and insecurity he found so annoying were back and he couldn't help a little of the disgust making its way to his face. “I don't want to talk about him. He's dead,” she continued as she turned her attention back to the body that lay between them.

“Yes, I know. I was standing six inches away when the back of his head flew off.”

The timidity was instantly replaced by shock, then she burst out laughing, covering her mouth with the back of her gloved wrist. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh.”

“No, don't apologise.”

“It's horrible, really. But—”

“Yes. But.”

It took her a few seconds to calm down and when she'd finally got a grip on herself, he continued. “So. Dinner.”

“Okay. Why not? I'm off at six.”

“Then I will be back at six.” As he left, he paused in the doorway. “Molly. This isn't—”

“I know. I know that's never going to happen.”

He tried to give her a smile, at least, but failed. So he gave her a small wave instead, which she answered before turning her attention back to the chest spreader in her hands. As he watched through the small window in the door, she gave it a crank and peered into the gaping cavity of the body spread on her examination table. He felt the beginnings of a smile as he turned away.

For the next two hours, Sherlock wandered London. He'd only been away a few weeks, but everywhere he looked, something had changed. New traffic signs. Scaffolding going up, a building now rubble. An alleyway closed off with a new iron fence. A curry house gone, and a coffee shop in its place. Ordinarily, the changeability of the city thrilled him, but today he felt unnerved by it and being unnerved annoyed him. It seemed as if the fickle, restless city was getting away from him.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled at the people noticing him as he strode through Lincoln's Inn fields. He hadn't bothered to lose his tail on the way to Bart's and he couldn't be bothered to do so now, but he didn't dare expose one of his usual boltholes to whoever was tailing him. So he wandered south, towards the Embankment and a place where he knew he'd be able to garner some peace and quiet and gather his thoughts.

When he arrived at Inner Temple and the ancient Templar Church, he skirted a departing group of tourists and headed straight into the Round, where he sat on a small folding chair he found near one of the effigies. He leant back and closed his eyes, drawing down into his mind palace to the room where he'd stored the faces of the carved grotesques that circled the room in the physical world. In his mind he moved from one to the other around the perimeter of the room, until he'd completed the circuit all the way, recovering and examining the various bits of data he'd hidden inside each. By the time he'd completed his task, the calm he'd been looking for had settled over him.

When Sherlock opened his eyes, he was not surprised to see a man in a smart grey suit sitting across from him. The man did not meet his eye and Sherlock supposed it could just be native British discretion, but Sherlock was famous and in his experience most people overcame their reticence around the famous, and watched back. At least a little. So the fact that the man wasn't could mean he was one of Sherlock's watchers. Not one of Mycroft's people, of course (despite the quite admirable suit), because Mycroft wouldn't allow someone in his employ who was stupid or sloppy enough to be seen when they shouldn't be. With a mental shrug, Sherlock chose to believe the man to be from one of the nearby Chambers, a solicitor in need of a bit of peace and quiet, as well.

Regardless, his supposed quiet refuge wasn't going to be much of one. So Sherlock stood with a sigh and ambled back out to the lowering skies of a London winter afternoon on the cusp of darkness. There was a cutting wind coming off the river, so he turned up the collar of his coat, shoved his hands in his pockets, and headed north into the twisting medieval courts and alleys of Holborn, curious to see if his tail could match Sherlock's knowledge of the dense nest of tiny streets and blind corners.

As he stepped out onto High Holborn, he received a text from Molly, directing him to a nearby pub. He was surprised to see that he was late and she'd already left the hospital. When Sherlock arrived, he found her seated at a table; she already had a glass of wine and a vodka in front of her. When he joined her, she leant over the table and whispered, “I think I might have been followed,” as she pushed the vodka across the table to him.

He leant towards her and whispered back, “I know I was.” As she turned to look at the board with the menu he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Most likely every person I pass three words with will be for the foreseeable future, so you should get used to it.”

She gave him a pensive look. “That should do wonders for my dating prospects.”

Sherlock couldn't help it, he laughed. Molly Hooper and sarcasm, together, was a concept he had difficulty wrapping his head around, but he found he didn't mind being wrong-footed by her in that moment.

Molly went to the bar to order her food and when she returned, told him she'd ordered hot pot for him and he scowled. She laughed at him in turn as he said, “I already have my mother, brother and Mrs Hudson; I do not require another 'maternal influence' in my life.”

“Too bad.”

While they waited for their food, Molly amused him with tales from the morgue. There seemed to be a run on battling relatives, and Sherlock came to understand where his customers went in the traditional slow period between the New Year and Easter.

Eventually the conversation stuttered to a halt; Sherlock watched Molly fidget and avoid meeting his eyes. “Molly, I need—”

“I know you want me to tell you about him,” she interrupted. “But I don't know anything. Really, I don't. He never told me anything.” The rising tide of unease in her voice was making him peevish, but he knew he had to let her have her say before asking any questions. Her anxiety was like a poison that had to be drawn out before he'd be able to get any sense out of her.

“He never talked about himself. He talked about you, actually.” She paused and there was a flash of disgust across her face. “How could I have been so stupid? It was obvious. I mean, how could I have not seen it?”

“Molly, don't.”

“No, it's okay. I mean, if you're going to find out what happened. I want to help. But—”

“I know.”

“No, you don't. Sorry. That was rude.”

“It's fine.”

“No, it's not.” She paused as the barman brought their food. Sherlock couldn't help a little smile as she watched the young man walk back to the bar, giving him a bit of a once-over.

“It's just. You've never been afraid of anything, have you? I mean, it seems like you're—fearless. All the time.” She ducked her head and toyed with a chip hanging off the edge of her plate. “I've always admired that about you.”

Sherlock didn't know how to respond, discomfited by her candour. He watched as she began to eat, carefully not looking at him as he watched her. He toyed with his food and grimaced when he found carrots in it, then pushed it away.

“You're wrong. I've been afraid.” She glanced at him, disbelief obvious on her face. “That day, at Bart's. I was afraid then. And later.”

Her only response was to focus intently on removing the tomatoes from her sandwich, again avoiding his eye. Eventually, just when Sherlock was starting to lose patience with her, she looked up at him. “Nothing he told me was the truth.”

“I need to hear it anyway.”

She sighed, took a sip of her wine, and steeled herself. “He told me his family was from Eastbourne but I always knew he was lying because of his accent. He said he had two younger sisters and one died in an accident when he was fifteen. He said he'd worked in IT for the government before he worked at Bart's and he'd lost his job because of cutbacks. I never met any of his friends; it was always him meeting mine.” She paused and looked down at her glass. “I wondered about that even then, but he was so charming. And funny. He always had interesting things to say. And he—”

It was obvious this time that she wasn't going to finish the thought and Sherlock suspected they'd finally reached the heart of the matter. And then she surprised him. “He let me talk about you. Men don't normally. I mean. He seemed sympathetic. Of course, now I know why. I should have—”

“Don't.” Sherlock leant over the table and dropped his voice. “There is no cause for you to feel ashamed about any of it. He outwitted us all, even Mycroft. Do you know how many people have managed to outwit my brother in the last twenty years?”

She gave him the weakest of smiles. “I'm guessing not many.”

“Yes, not many.” He shrugged and gave her a slightly comic grimace. “Loath as I am to admit it, my brother's reputation is well-earned. And not just the evil overlord part, either.”

That earned him a choked-off chuckle. “I don't imagine any of that was useful.”

“No, of course it was. You're right, though; likely all lies from top to bottom. But someone once told me that a disguise is always a reflection of ourselves, so there'll be hints there. Allusions to the truth, as it's usually best to keep a lie as close to it as you can. If nothing else, we can rule out Eastbourne when looking for more data. It's always beneficial to narrow the search parameters.”

“Good.” She smiled and as she began to eat, Sherlock started picking the carrots out of his hot pot.

~ + ~

That night, Sherlock went through all his old notes from the Carl Powers case. The case that simply would not die. After ten minutes he realised he was going to get the chance to see just how long his MI5 lead was. He closed the file and turned to his computer to check the Brighton train schedules.

~ + ~

**Tuesday, January 13**

In the end, it turned out to be even easier than Sherlock had expected. All he had to do was turn up at the school, pretend to be a parent enquiring about enrolment in the autumn, dredge up the most egregious Marlborough old boy drawl he could muster, and the school secretary was falling all over herself to show him every nook and cranny of the place. 

Dawdling while he examined pictures of the various school teams hung in the corridor outside the gymnasium, he waited to see if anyone would enter the school’s file room, located just to his left. As he searched the photos from the late 1980s, a middle-aged woman with a pile of folders approached, and out of the corner of his eye he watched her key in a six-digit access code.

Four hours later, he punched in the telephone number of the school’s receptionist and wondered again at the general laziness and predictability of the human race. On the other hand, it was remarkably easy to find the files he was looking for, rigorous filing systems once again proving an absolutely vital to a successful break-in. 

As he made his way through the two relevant files, he had to wonder, though: who in their right mind named both their twins James? It was obvious the Victorians were correct in their belief that madness ran in families, Sherlock thought. Lack of imagination, as well, he added.

Ambling back towards Brighton through the well-manicured neighbourhoods of Hove, Sherlock texted Mycroft.

_You never told me about the twin.  
SH_

He was surprised to even receive a reply, and didn’t have to wait more than two minutes for it.

_Records indicate he died in 1992.  
M_

Sherlock swore. He supposed it served him right, though, for not bothering to read through the entire files. Then he stopped. _Records indicate_. Sherlock smiled and pulled out his phone to locate the nearest public library.

Later that evening, as he entered Brighton train station for his return to London, he received a text from John. _At Baker Street. Where are you?_

_Brighton  
SH_

_Why?_

_Why do you think?  
SH_

Two minutes later John's response arrived. _Sussex mud, overlaid with London. Right._

Sherlock smiled. After all these years, John was finally starting to make some progress. _Yes indeed. SH_

~ + ~

John stood on the pavement outside 221B, staring at his phone. He allowed himself a hearty swear at the fickleness of consulting detectives, then with a wry grin, dropped the phone into his pocket. He hefted the backpack containing the notebooks Sherlock had wanted onto his shoulder and headed off to the Tube.

The evening rush was long over, so he was able to get a seat for the ride out to the suburbs and home, and his delayed and eagerly-anticipated dinner after another grinding day at the clinic. He leant back in the seat; just sitting quietly and not having to listen to anyone else's problems for forty minutes seemed like heaven. He felt himself drifting off; as he didn't want to fall asleep and miss his station, he kept himself awake by playing what he called the Deduction Game: trying to figure out people's jobs just from what he could observe. John had stopped playing the game after Sherlock's “death”, but now that most of the painful associations were gone he again allowed himself the indulgence when he had the energy and inclination.

As he looked around at the other passengers, he saw the expected London mix: students, corporate types in suits (at least one of whom he'd already identified as an accountant), a pair of elderly women who appeared to be heading home after a day shopping “in town”, and a young man who John was sure was a nurse. And in the far corner of the carriage, a thirty-ish man in a suit too posh for a public transport passenger. He was not particularly well trained in surveillance, either, as he allowed John to catch him watching, twice.

John was surprised at himself, for his reaction was more resignation than anger. He and Mary had been assuming since Christmas that they were under constant surveillance: cameras in their flat (repeatedly removed by Mary), taps on their phones, and followers out in public. But this was the first time either of them had caught someone.

Since the trip to the airfield to say their good-byes, John had seemed to be always looking over his shoulder, waiting for something to happen, some sort of consequences from the events at Appledore. He still had no idea what those consequences might be; based on his and Mary's observations, what seemed to be happening was the one thing they'd least expected: absolutely nothing. Now they knew that this apparent normality was dependent on Sherlock's assignment regarding the “Moriarty” video.

It was disheartening for him and Mary that conversations had returned to coded trivialities, so soon after they'd begun communicating again after all those months of tense near-silence. The absence of the expected changes to their life had done nothing but raise their anxiety levels that first week after Christmas. John hadn't been surprised that Mary coped better than he did. He imagined that this sort of tense anticipation was something she had become familiar with in her past, and the impending arrival of the baby gave her something tangible and happy to focus on.

To all outward appearances, his and Mary's life had just gone back to what it had been before Christmas. John returned to the clinic, working extra shifts as they were short-staffed and the usual mid-winter rush was on. Mary was at home all the time now, her approaching due date making itself felt in sky-high blood pressure, perpetual discomfort and an inability to spend much time on her feet. He and Mary rarely spoke of Appledore or what had brought it on, despite her precautions to ensure they weren't overheard at home. John hated that despite his best efforts to fight the creeping, insidious unease, he'd begun to internalise the caution.

John wished more than anything that none of it had happened. He acknowledged that he shouldn't have taken the gun to the Holmes' at Christmas. Viewed objectively, it had been a bizarre thing to do, and John grudgingly admitted that Mycroft had had a point when he'd asked John what kind of threat he'd anticipated facing in his mother's kitchen. 

No matter how much he'd tried in the weeks since, John couldn't get Mycroft's words out of his head: _You don't think, you don't question, you're just a good little soldier who does exactly what he's told. And you wonder why a flagrant narcissist like my brother has taken you to his heart._

John hadn't anticipated anything on Christmas Day, or thought about why Sherlock would want him to bring his gun. John had just trusted him, a man whose judgement he'd suspected for months to be compromised by drugs and borderline obsession. And what did that say about John? Nothing good, he was willing to admit now. He was starting to get annoyed that Mycroft's words on Boxing Day kept appearing in his mind unexpectedly, like zombies crawling out of their graves to grab the living as they passed by. The most disturbing idea—that Sherlock was only friends with John because he always did what he was told without question—John felt confident denying outright. He refused to accept that he was that spineless, or that even Sherlock was that narcissistic and manipulative. 

Mycroft's harping on about the gun had seemed like willful obtuseness; John now recognised it revealed—to Mycroft's eyes, anyway—a dysfunction in John's relationship with Sherlock. One which John hadn't wanted to acknowledge then, but was more difficult to deny the more he thought about it, even if Mycroft was (as usual) over-dramatising it all.

While his instincts rebelled against Mycroft's words, John couldn't help admitting that there was a pattern to certain parts of his life, in regards to the two most important people in it. After all, he'd accepted without question everything Mary had told him about herself, her life and her past. All of it lies, even her name. In the painful months between Sherlock's revelation and Christmas, John had come to accept the reality of them. But he'd accepted the reality of her love for him, as well, and that that love outweighed all the lies. So he'd chosen to rededicate himself to her and their child and their future together. Doing so didn't prevent him from thinking that if Sherlock really had jumped off the roof of Bart's, John likely would have spent his entire life with Mary never knowing the truth, and John didn't yet know how he felt about that.

To distract himself from his unresolvable thoughts, he let his mind drift as he sat, his hands clasped tightly between his spread knees. He examined the distinctive callouses and catalogued the scars on his right hand, trying to recall how he'd made each of them. Wrestling a young infantryman delusional from fear and pain as he was loaded into a field ambulance. An uppercut to the jaw of a particularly obnoxious American marine in a bar in the Canadian zone of Kandahar, egged on by half a squadron of equally-drunken Pats. A collapsed scrum that had turned into a brawl and cost him two broken fingers and three weeks' surgical rotation during his training.

At the ripe old age of forty-three, John was coming to the realisation that he might have a problem with impulse control. And thinking for himself. Maybe. 

John cursed Mycroft for dropping that bit of poison in his ear, making him question Sherlock's friendship with him. Encouraging the doubts that John had always had about why Sherlock would want to be friends with someone so beneath him in intelligence and, well, everything, really. But he couldn't help but be a little angry at himself as well, for being unable to dismiss the idea from his mind outright. Typical fucking Mycroft, he thought, trying to make everyone as suspicious and miserable as him. And the man had decades' worth of expertise in fucking with other people's heads, so it wasn't surprising that he'd been so successful at messing with John's.

While all his instincts as John Watson, friend of Sherlock Holmes, rebelled against it on a fundamental level, Doctor John Watson, regimental surgeon who'd seen hundreds of men with battle fatigue, knew that Mycroft was suffering as well. It seemed there was enough misery coming out of that one bullet fired on Christmas Day to share around. Everywhere he looked, John saw someone affected by it, and in that moment he resolved that he and Mary would not go under; he refused to have them pulled down into the vortex with Mycroft, drowning under the political waves caused by Sherlock's actions.

The moment John realised what his goal was, his resolve hardened. He had a mission, and that pleased his inner soldier. Now he just needed a plan. And luckily for him, he was married to someone with expertise in devising cunning plans.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, January 14 and Thursday, January 15**

As the days of frustrating research crawled to their conclusion, Sherlock realised that his options had been distilled by circumstance down to one: The Woman.

The thought of seeing her again initiated an uncomfortable flutter in his chest, a quickening of something that he knew he didn’t want reborn. But she appeared to be the only route still open to the information he needed. He wondered what MI5’s response was going to be to him jumping on an aeroplane to India, her last known location.

Sherlock stared at the text he'd typed five minutes ago. His thumb hovered over the Send button. 

_Available for dinner?_

On the surface, the message was anodyne, as anonymous to anyone other than him and its recipient as he could make it, and contained nothing that should flag the text to any automated monitoring program. The phone had been stashed away, never used until now, a thin, silent pathway of potential communication. But he knew that his brother knew about it. He knew that the number would be monitored. The text would be noted, logged, traced. But no one other than Mycroft would know the identity of the person at the other end of that thin thread. Mycroft's PA would forward a copy of the text to him in a trice and Mycroft would know that Sherlock had initiated contact with Irene for the first time in three years. After all, who else could Sherlock know in India that he would need to keep secret? And Sherlock cursed himself for drawing Mycroft's attention with his ridiculous request for the Moriarty file. Sherlock had known he wouldn't hand it over, and yet had still demanded it. Now Mycroft would probably scramble another of his SAS teams to be on standby, ready to nab Sherlock the moment he arrived at Heathrow.

Irritated at his own missishness, he jabbed the Send button anyway and flopped onto the sofa.

Afterwards, he felt agitated, checking his phone every five minutes for her reply. It was the middle of the night in Mumbai, but he knew that meant nothing. Her life was as irregular as his. 

After two hours without a reply, Sherlock began to fret in earnest. Would she answer? He scoffed at the idea. Why wouldn't she? She thought herself in love with him. Weren't people supposed to be willing to do anything for the object of their affections? Then he thought: had her feelings changed? It had, after all, been some time since they'd had any contact. Perhaps she now thought herself in love with someone else. 

Sherlock tried to force himself to stop worrying. Even if she had fallen out of love with him, of course she would want him to visit. Relying on the sentimental attachments of other people had never failed Sherlock in the past, but even he had to admit that the rules that applied to ordinary people hardly did to Irene. Perhaps his absence had caused her affections to diminish. Though, he had saved her life; she owed him for that, at least.

The next afternoon a message appeared.

_Only if you're coming to play._

_Not likely. Feel the desire to reminisce._

There was no reply for ten minutes and Sherlock wondered if she was with a client. He imagined a rotund middle-aged businessman naked, gagged, hog-tied and suspended from the ceiling by his ankles in a tasteful boudoir, while The Woman paced around him, crop in one hand and mobile in the other, texting Sherlock while excoriating her client in flawless Marathi.

_Reminiscence or rematch?_

_No games this time_

_You really are no fun at all_

_We need some alone time_

_Oh goody. I did promise twice, didn't I?_

Sherlock paused. How much should he tell her? He knew he'd be able to lead her to the correct conclusion without using Moriarty's name, but wasn't sure if doing so would spook her into running. And he didn't have the time to chase her down if she scampered off to another bolthole and severed their only line of communication.

 _I need to see you._ If nothing else, that would tell her that all was not well.

_Next week. Call me when you land._

_Sooner than that._

_Can't, busy._

_Have fun._

_Always, gorgeous._

Sherlock smiled. Plan set in motion, he turned his attention to flights. He dug into the pile of false passports and credit cards left over from the stash Mycroft had given him after his “suicide”. He wondered if any of the cards still worked; only one of the passports was still valid, so he grabbed the associated card and headed for the nearest public library.

~ + ~

**Thursday, January 15**

When Sherlock checked the identity of his caller, he was surprised to see that it was Mary. Not that she was the last person he expected to hear from, but she rarely tried to interfere in his friendship with John, as he was sure she was about to.

“Hello there, stranger,” she said as soon as he picked up the call.

“Yes.”

“That's a friendly hello. Am I interrupting something?”

“If you were I wouldn't have answered.”

“Of course you wouldn't.”

She sounded well enough to Sherlock's ears so he didn't bother asking how she was faring. John, of course, he knew was fine because John was always fine. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, but Sherlock knew she was probably the only person other than Mycroft that he couldn't out-wait, so he eventually gave in. “How are you?”

“Fine.” 

He could hear her amusement at his concession to social conventions, which for some reason she always seemed to find entertaining. “How are you?” she fired back in an apparent attempt to see if she could get him to break first.

“I am just fantastic. Awesome. Tickety boo. Am I forgetting any of them?”

“I think you're covered.” She paused and Sherlock resolved not to crack, then she continued. “I wanted to apologise for John. I have no idea what's got up his nose recently. He's been an absolute bear since Christmas. Has he said anything to you?”

Sherlock paused while he wondered why she felt the need to apologise for John. Sherlock had long ago accepted the man's stubbornness and occasional obtuseness; considering what he put John through on a regular basis, Sherlock thought he was getting the better end of the bargain. “No, he hasn't mentioned anything in particular.”

“Why?”

“How would I know? Why not ask the man yourself.” Sherlock wondered if the Christmas Truce between John and Mary was falling apart already; he hoped she wasn't planning trying to use him as an intermediary in their marriage. His one attempt at marriage counselling hadn't gone particularly well, if he recalled correctly, regardless of how necessary it had been.

“Have you seen Greg recently?” Mary asked.

“Stop fishing.”

“Sorry.” She didn't sound very sorry, he thought. “But I'm worried about you.”

“Why? You saw me four days ago. It takes me a lot longer than that to fall off the wagon, so stop fussing. One Mycroft in my life is a more than adequate supply. And shouldn't you be preparing for your, whatever it's called? Confinement.”

“Confinement?” She burst out laughing and he was glad she couldn't see the smile on his face at the sound of it. “My God, Sherlock, nobody's called it that for about two hundred years.”

“Which is how long it's been since a Holmes has paid the slightest notice to what pregnant women are about.”

“I doubt that. I see your father as a hoverer.”

“Grandfather always did refer to Father as the family disappointment.”

“Oh, poor Tom.”

“Hardly. He was the first Holmes in five generations to escape the horrors of the parish and drowning a sense of inadequacy in a bottle hidden in the vestry. Our household was hellish enough without religion being forced down our throats, so I suppose I should thank him for deciding to be the black sheep of the family.”

There was nothing from Mary for a few seconds. “You really need to get out more if you think _your_ family is hellish.” She sounded almost angry and a piece of the Mary Puzzle slipped into place in the back of his mind.

“So. Did you have any reason for calling other than to hover needlessly?”

“Not really.” She sounded more her usual self again, to his relief. 

“I'll sign off then and you can report to whoever it is you're reporting to that you've conducted your check-in and that to all appearances I'm still firmly _on_ the wagon.”

He'd meant it as a joke, but the sharp intake of breath he heard from the other end of the line told him he'd misfired, badly. “You can be such an arsehole, Sherlock.” Then she rang off. Sherlock stared at his phone for a moment before dropping it into the pocket of his dressing gown and returning to his microscope, beset by an unfamiliar disquiet.

~ + ~

**Friday, January 16**

Sherlock's next meeting with Doctor Deborah was much the same as the first. She didn't have any information for him, which Sherlock thought more than a little suspicious. Wasn't the reason that he was called back from his probable one-way trip to Kosovo to deal with the Moriarty situation?

“I'm not sure what I can tell you. No one has brought me anything for you. I've been trying to get the morons at head office to give me some answers, but people just look shifty and change the subject.”

Sherlock wondered how long he should play along. Deborah was reasonably intelligent; even she would eventually get suspicious at his complaisance with the lack of official activity. “I wonder if there even is anything. The man was never known for shyness; I imagine his associates are much the same.” 

“That thought has crossed my mind.” Deborah was toying with her cigarette lighter so Sherlock suggested they go outside for a smoke. 

As they sat bundled up in her back garden, puffing away, he wondered if he should give it up again, seeing as his life expectancy now might reasonably be considered to be longer than six months. Well, unless he started smoking _a lot_.

“Nothing's happening.”

Deborah lit a second cigarette from the dying end of her first. She nodded as she inhaled. “Did notice that.”

“Phoney war.”

“Or no war at all.”

“A mass delusion.”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “The PM saw it too, and that man has less imagination than anyone I've ever met in my life. If he saw it, it was right there in front of him; more likely it'd be there and he didn't notice it than him making it up.”

“And nothing since.”

“Not a sausage.”

“He's waiting for us to let down our guard.”

“Who?”

“Whoever created that ridiculous, crude little—” Sherlock stopped, his cigarette halfway to his mouth. No. No, there was no way. He wouldn't have. Sherlock tossed the idea out of his mind as ridiculous. It snuck back in through the side door. He picked it up by the scruff of the neck and gave it a boot in the arse for good measure as he tossed it out the second time. But it wouldn't leave; it hung around by the back door of his mind, silent and still but manifestly present. Then a detail of her little speech interrupted his train of thought, like a herd of cattle on the tracks causing the engine to grind to a halt. “How the hell do you know the Prime Minister?”

“The perils of marrying a posho. They seem to come as a set. Boring as fuck the lot of them, if you'll excuse the language.”

“Excused.”

“I think Maris gave in to her lezzer-ness just to avoid having to marry one of the chinless wonders and perpetuate the species.” She gave an explosive laugh that descended into a cough. “She calls it her gift to the human race: not participating in the production of more Etonians.”

They smoked in companionable silence for five minutes or so until The Exceptionally Well-Connected Maris poked her head out the kitchen window and called Deborah to the phone. When she returned, there was a solemn expression on her face. She pulled out another cigarette, stared at it for a second, then returned it to the pack. “Let's go to the office.”

Sherlock let her lead the way and when they were settled in their usual chairs, Deborah squirmed for a few seconds, avoiding his eye. “So. How have you been keeping yourself occupied this last week?”

He shrugged as he wondered who'd spilled the beans, though he refused to even contemplate giving her the satisfaction of asking her just how much she knew. 

“A fellow at the Met gave me some cold cases to work on.”

“A fellow. Does that happen often? Random, nameless policemen giving you cold cases?”

“Pardon me; I misspoke. In an effort to attain the degree of linguistic precision you require: Detective Chief Inspector Graham Lestrade graced me with his rumpled presence in a drinking establishment of low repute one evening and rained his benedictions upon me in the form of four cold cases.”

“Okay. What else have you been doing?”

“Are you my parole officer, now?”

“Handler. Parole officer. Not much difference, really.”

Sherlock wondered if she knew about his efforts to contact The Woman. Mycroft wouldn't have told her, but Sherlock had no idea if MI5 had shared with her their possible knowledge of his secret line to India. Though it wasn't obvious if someone had just told Deborah that Sherlock had been spreading his wings in an unapproved fashion, or if it was something else entirely. But it was clear that this new information upset her in some way. If the former, it confirmed his growing suspicions about the reality behind his so-called mission.“What do you want to know? You can't do subtle to save your life. Just spit it out and let me on my way.”

“Well, there's nothing in particular. But if we're going to get you out of this mess, we'll need to work together. And that starts with you telling me what you're up to.”

“Ah. It's the lying that hurts so much. Is that it, Doctor?” He didn't bother even attempting to keep the disdain out of his voice.

She sighed. “I wonder why I bother. Sometimes I wonder why _anyone_ bothers.”

“That's a bit harsh.”

“Only a tiny bit.” She held up her hand, thumb and forefinger a millimetre apart.

“The criminal classes would rejoice at my demise.”

“The criminal classes are not my problem.”

“Lucky you.”

“Sometimes.” She toyed with her lighter. “Today, not so much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Pats" (or "Patricias") is a nickname for the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, a Canadian army regiment whose battalions served a number of tours in Afghanistan, some of which were based in Kandahar in the years John might have been there.
> 
> Wondering what Mycroft was up to this week? Find out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/15802528).


	3. To the disappointment of the odious Blythe

**Saturday, January 17**

When Sherlock arrived at John and Mary's, he immediately noticed the tension that hung in the air. The last thing he wanted was to get caught in the middle of another of their domestics, so he ignored it as irrelevant. They had a case to solve and they needed to make some progress before MI5 started breathing down Sherlock's neck, or changed their minds and shipped him back off to some fatal corner of the world or other.

Sherlock bore with the apparently requisite tea and chit-chat, watching John and Mary studiously not talk to one another, or, more annoyingly, covertly talk to each other through Sherlock. Within ten minutes, he'd had enough.

“I think there's another Moriarty in London.”

John looked as though he prevented himself from spewing tea across the table only through heroic efforts. Mary frowned at Sherlock. “You said he was dead.”

“Oh, he is. Well, that one is. But someone very much wants us to think there's another one. Of course, there's also the chance that whoever created that asinine video is entirely unrelated.” He glanced between their unexpectedly solemn faces.

“Okay,” John replied.

Sherlock could tell that John was trying to sound open-minded about the situation, while simultaneously rebelling against the notion. Why, Sherlock wasn't sure. He turned to Mary because the sceptical look on John's face disturbed him. “Supposedly there used to be a brother—”

“I thought you got rid of his 'network'. I thought that was the point of you disappearing for two years,” John interrupted. _I thought you made us all safe._

“Yes, well. I appear to have missed one. Maybe.”

“The one that got away,” Mary added quietly, bemused.

Sherlock turned back to John. His best friend in the world. Who had barely been receptive since Sherlock's arrival and who was now visibly forcing himself to meet Sherlock's eye. “How do you expect us to help? You don't even know what you're up against.”

His friend's tone made Sherlock's heart sink a little. “Of course we don't; that's the fun, isn't it? Where's your sense of adventure?” Sherlock pulled back from John's sullen expression as he looked away and crossed his arms over his chest. Sherlock was surprised to realise he was going to have to beg a little, pretend to acknowledge his mistakes, cry a few metaphorical crocodile tears to get John on board.

“I need you, John. What happened with Magnussen. I should never have taken him on without you.” He held up a hand as if fending off protests. “At the beginning. The drugs. That. That was foolhardy. I thought I could work without you, like I had before we met. But now, I realise I need you at my side, John. To keep me right.”

John's expression didn't change throughout Sherlock's little speech, which he thought a little petty, for tt was an excellent one, with just the right hint of contrition. Mary was turned to John, watching his reaction as well. For a minute or so no one spoke and Sherlock felt the tension ratchet up a notch or two before John finally answered.

He unfolded his arms, sighed, and stared at the table between them as he spoke. “Well, that's a new one.”

“What do you mean?”

John shifted in his seat before meeting Sherlock's gaze again. “I mean, you go off the rails, go back on drugs, murder a man. And somehow this is _all my_ fault.”

“John—” Mary started.

“That's not what I said,” Sherlock protested, confused.

“But it's what you meant. Why all of a sudden am I responsible for keeping you sober, eh?” John was pointing the Judgement Finger at Sherlock now, which he found irritating beyond belief. 

“When did I say you were?”

“You have never, ever accepted responsibility for what you did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You _murdered_ a man, Sherlock. An unarmed man.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Mary started before Sherlock managed to respond.

“Mary.” The warning in John's voice was crystal-clear and Sherlock wondered why she was putting up with it.

“That's it. I've had it with this.” Mary struggled to her feet and strode as quickly as her condition allowed down the corridor to the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

Sherlock didn't know whether to ask or not. From the look on John's face, he could tell he'd be wading into a standing argument, so refrained from commenting.

For a minute or so neither of them said anything and Sherlock began to wonder if perhaps he should leave. John was staring at his hands, rubbing his knuckles as if they were worry beads.

“I know you said you did it for us. And sometimes I think you even believe that. But Sherlock. Why should we trust you?”

Sherlock wasn't sure how to respond. He had difficulty imagining John not trusting him. Being upset with him, yes, he had plenty of experience with that. But John had trusted him seemingly since Sherlock's first deduction of him in the lab at Bart's. “I know you're upset. I'm guessing what happened at Appledore was a shock—”

“Yeah. Brilliant deduction, there. Seeing your best friend murder someone not ten feet away from you. Yeah. _Shocking_ doesn't come close, actually.”

“What did you think 'take down his network' meant?”

An expression Sherlock didn't recognise flashed across John's face for a moment before settling into weary resignation. “So. You spent two years running around Europe murdering people. No wonder you didn't want me to know.”

“Of course not. But people did die, I'm sure. Does that bother you? Criminals being killed by other criminals? Because that's a little unfair, especially considering _your_ history.”

“No, I don't think so.” The Finger was back as John leant over the table, face tight with another run at anger. “You are a drug addict. No, you are. You have lied to me, taken my help for granted, and made me an accessory to murder. And now you want me to endanger my family by going after some lunatic pretending to be Jim Moriarty. Or his brother or cousin or something else you don't know what they are. Really? You don't see how I might have a bit of an issue with that? You really are a moron.”

“John—”

“Shut up. For once in your life just shut up and listen to something other than the delusions floating around in that head of yours. You were right about one thing, before. You're completely off the rails.”

“Stop channelling Mycroft.”

“Sherlock, shut up. You're a drug addict. You lie to everyone. Especially yourself. And no, I'm not going to help you chase down whoever it is pretending to be the man who sent a sniper after me for _leverage_ and put my family in the line of fire of whoever's playing games with you now. Because as much as— Well—” John paused and the pained expression that usually presaged some sort of blundering emotional confession appeared on his face and Sherlock did his best to suppress the nervous laughter that threatened at the back of his throat.

“Are you finished?” Sherlock asked once it became obvious that John was disinclined to continue, now that he'd floundered into the swamp of the more tender emotions.

John rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Yeah, probably.”

Sherlock re-ordered his thoughts before continuing. “To be honest, I don't think we're going to be dealing with another Moriarty.” _Maybe_ , he thought. “There's a good chance this is just someone using Moriarty's face as bait. Someone who knows that he's a bogeyman. Regardless, whoever is behind all this knows about our friendship, so you're involved whether you want to be or not.”

“So, we may as well help, then? _Very_ convenient for you.”

“Nothing I said before was a lie, John. I need you. To tell me to pay attention to people. When I'm being not good.” _When I'm going off the rails._

“I don't— I don't know if I can do that now. Not with everything else that's going on.”

“What else—? Oh, right. The baby,” Sherlock added at the exasperated look on John's face. “So. You're breaking up with me?”

John looked up from his hands to Sherlock's face and a moment later the two of them burst out laughing.

Later, as they were wiping their eyes, Sherlock was glad to note that the tension had eased somewhat. But John still looked resolute and Sherlock didn't know what to make of their situation. “Mary can take care of herself.”

“So she keeps saying. But the baby can't. The last thing we need is some Moriarty fanboy coming after us. And that's without even whatever's going to happen because of Magnussen.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Let me take care of the Magnussen issue. It's all in hand.”

“Really?”

“Such a cynic, John.”

“No, not really. Mycroft said—”

“Oh, god, stop listening to Mycroft. I thought you'd know better by now.” Sherlock paused as a realisation struck. “Is _he_ behind this, this _attitude_ of yours?”

John stared at him for a few seconds, obviously suppressing what he wanted to say. Then he sighed and sat back in his chair, folding his arms again. “He can't make this one go away for you, can he?”

“John, leave it. Leave Mycroft to his little games.”

“Not when those little games might affect my family.”

“Well, the sooner you help me chase down whoever is responsible for that ridiculous video, the sooner everything will be all cleared up. There you go; all sorted.”

“No. Not all sorted.”

Sherlock stared across the table at his best friend and was disheartened by the expression on his face. The one that said: you are not going to change my mind, and the more you push, the more I'm going to dig in my heels. So Sherlock knew that the only way he was going to get John at his side again was to make him want to come back. And then and there, Sherlock had no idea how he was going to do that. Another challenge to face, just when it was the very last thing he needed.

~ + ~

**Sunday, January 18**

Everywhere Sherlock looked he saw obstacles. The people whose job it was to help him wouldn't. People whose help he'd taken for granted were abandoning him. He might be chasing a ghost. Or not. Wiggins and other members of his homeless network had confirmed twice that there was no word on the street of anything out of the ordinary going on in the city. 

If it was another Moriarty family member, or associate, or copycat, then they were showing remarkable restraint. Which spoke against whoever it was being a family member; that kind of crazy didn't grow in isolation. Either that or they were remarkably resourceful. Or they were so familiar with Sherlock's methods and resources that they knew exactly what to do to avoid detection. On the one hand, Sherlock wanted the perpetrator to be the supposed-dead brother; he would at least know what they were up against. But he didn't relish the prospect of facing another Moriarty, one with full knowledge of what Sherlock and Mycroft had done to take down his brother's network in Europe.

He knew he was stalling, squandering the day swirling bits of data around in his mind in the hope that some of the pieces would mesh together, and hopefully start forming a pattern. He was avoiding thinking about the one huge issue looming over his mind that he was going to have to come to grips with: John's betrayal. Well, _betrayal_ was a bit melodramatic, perhaps. Sherlock didn't know what to call it other than disturbing, out of character and entirely unexpected. Or was it?

Setting aside his emotional response to John's words, Sherlock looked back over their conversations since Christmas. A cursory examination revealed that Sherlock shouldn't have been surprised when John had finally mustered the nerve to refuse to help. And that Mary had known it was coming, and that her disagreement with John on the matter was causing strains in their marriage. He assured himself that the Moriarty issue had blinded him to what had been going on with John, causing him to not notice what had been coming.

Sherlock was startled to realise that John was afraid, a previously unimaginable state of affairs. John was never afraid. Fear required an awareness of consequences that had rarely seemed to appear in John's mind until after events had come to their conclusion. The man's natural instincts were for action and reaction, not contemplation. John was the quintessential anti-Mycroft, which had suited Sherlock to perfection for the entire course of their friendship. But John's instincts were clouded, and now that Sherlock thought about it, this turn of events likely had been the source of John's irritability of late: John was acting against what he knew were his own normal impulses. 

While Sherlock admitted that John's concerns for his family—in general, if perhaps not in the specifics of this case—had some merit, Sherlock sensed a guiding hand pushing his friend in that direction, and he was not happy about that at all.

He toyed with his phone and noted the time: 6:42 p.m. Mycroft would most likely be home by now after another fun-filled day pulling the strings of the nation. Twice Sherlock called and both times there was no answer, so he resorted to a text.

_Come over for dinner?  
SH_

To his surprise, the response came almost immediately. Obviously Mycroft was working late, stuck in some dull meeting or other where his presence was required, but during which he needn't pay much attention, or he was at his club.

_Who are you and how did you acquire my brother's mobile?  
M _

Sherlock chuckled. 

_Very funny. Where's your sense of adventure?  
SH _

_The same place as my sense of humour. Absent since birth.  
M _

_Sense of responsibility, then.  
SH _

_I'm required to allow you to give me food poisoning?  
M _

_Mary taught me how to make lasagna. Nothing else to do with my time.  
SH _

_Lasagna? How prosaic. Perhaps we should have a “pot luck” some time.  
M_

_And the other I know very well not to be true.  
M _

_And yet you refuse to act on that knowledge.  
SH _

_I have other responsibilities right now, Sherlock.  
M _

_The queen can have someone else lay at her feet and light her cigs.  
SH _

_Very droll. Sorry, no, I meant dull.  
M _

_Unlike you, I'm inherently incapable of ever being dull.  
SH _

_Much as I'm enjoying this little distraction from the Syria crisis, I'm afraid I must get back to work.  
M _

_So you are responsible for that. I did wonder.  
SH _

_I've seen your handiwork with John. Very thorough.  
SH_

_Which particular delusion is that statement in reference to?  
M_

_He's not going anywhere.  
SH_

_Was the matter ever in doubt?  
M_

_Because he's twice the man you are and you've always been wrong about him.  
SH_

Sherlock waited five minutes for Mycroft's scathing reply, which never came. While he wasn't surprised to see Mycroft refuse to rise to the bait regarding John, he was perplexed. Mycroft had never refused him _twice_ before, not on a professional issue. It confirmed Sherlock's suspicion about what must be happening on the government side of things. 

So, another avenue blocked off. Whoever Mycroft's enemies were, they'd effectively sealed Sherlock in a room with no door or windows, no air or light, and no means of communicating with the outside world. It was as if Sherlock had become a clue in his own personal locked room mystery. It was beyond annoying, but Sherlock had to grudgingly admire the thoroughness and resourcefulness of whoever was behind it. 

Now that the arrangements for India were in place, Sherlock felt at a bit of a loose end. The public seemed to have forgotten the case entirely, other than a few elements of the lunatic fringe and some residual stalker fans. Even Twitter had gone largely silent on the matter.

Sherlock knew he needed to keep himself occupied. More than once over the last week he had glanced through the bag with the cold case files from Lestrade. None had seemed particularly interesting, but one of them might be useful filling a day until he headed off for Mumbai.

He needed a hobby. Well, other than drugs, he supposed.

What was it Donovan had said to John all those years ago? Fishing. Stamp collecting. The idea sounded suicide-inducing without the joys of a good old fashioned overdose. Not that his current situation was anywhere near as boring and stressful as rehab.

Though he had to admit his last bout of rehab hadn't been entirely awful. Mycroft's strange PA had found the place and even escorted Sherlock there, as Mycroft had been out of the country planning a proxy war, or some such thing. Two days after Sherlock's arrival a footballer had checked in, and Sherlock had at least had the entertainment of observing the vermin of the tabloid press and their laughably incompetent attempts to break into the place.

From his position on the sofa, Sherlock stared across the room to where the files still lurked on the floor. With a sigh he levered himself up and grabbed the bag before flopping down into his chair. Further examination confirmed the boring nature of most of the files, excepting perhaps the disappeared girl from Leeds. He dropped the rest of the folders back on the floor and opened the first of three fat folders on the case and began reading. There was no question of taking it on, though; it was obvious that it would need more time than Sherlock was willing to give to it. He dropped it onto the pile and picked up the next one. Ten minutes later, he could feel the first tendrils of intrigue uncurling in his mind, and he decided he was due a road trip. And this case had the interesting point of taking him to one of the areas of London he was less familiar with: Golders Green.

~ + ~

**Monday, January 19**

Sherlock headed out early the next morning. Golders Green was a fairly typical Victorian suburb and one of the few parts of north-central London that hadn't been extensively gentrified in the last decade. The high street was a mix of chain shops and older family-run businesses. But the traditionally Jewish neighbourhood was changing, he noticed. He couldn't have imagined Indian restaurants on Finsbury Road twenty years ago. 

After ambling down the high street and some of the nearby residential back roads, Sherlock stopped in front of the restaurant now located where the Klein's bakery had been in 2003. As he peered through the window, he caught the eye of a man who appeared to be setting up for the lunch trade. While Sherlock watched, the man continued turning over chairs and moving tables, occasionally glancing over to where Sherlock watched through the plate glass. 

After a few minutes, the man unlocked the door and stuck his head out. “Can I help you?”

“Probably not.” The man pulled his head back as though to re-lock the door. “No, no. I was wondering.” The man stared at Sherlock as he spoke, obviously thinking he was either a nuisance or a nutter. “How long have you been here? I remember there was a bakery here before.”

The man's response was entirely unexpected: an angry expression, the door slammed shut and locked, and the man scurrying into the back of the restaurant, soon replaced by an older man who bustled up to the door with an expression that gave Sherlock pause. After unlocking the door and practically yanking it off its hinges, the man demanded, “What do you want? You some journalist? You fucking parasite, leave us alone! You should be ashamed of yourself but you people don't have a shred of shame in you, do you?”

Sherlock couldn't help taking a step back from the verbal barrage, before collecting himself. People continued along the pavement, paying them no heed. Sherlock wondered if the man screaming at strangers was a regular occurrence. “Mr Klein?” Despite the attack, he was pleasantly surprised to have hit the jackpot: surviving family members. “I'm not a journalist. I just remember the bakery. I've been away in America and was just looking around the old neighbourhood. I'm sorry if I've said something to offend you. I'll leave you alone,” Sherlock added in his most apologetic tones.

The man appeared mollified, and somewhat contrite. “I'm sorry, young man. You wouldn't know, then. My family suffered a tragedy and every once in a while the press bastards come crawling back to dig around in the dirt.”

“I'm terribly sorry, Mr Klein. I didn't know.”

The man looked at him, head tilted to one side in a gesture that instantly reminded Sherlock of Doctor Deborah. “I hope you don't mind me saying so, but you don't sound much like a boy from this neighbourhood.”

“No, you're correct. My violin tutor lived nearby, so I was here every week for a few years.”

“Ah, that makes sense.”

“Was that your son? I'm sorry if I upset him.”

“Yes, he is. Good boy, but a bit nervous sometimes.”

“Well, I'm sorry for upsetting him. And you, of course. I'll leave you to your work, then.” Sherlock gave the man what he hoped was a placating smile, then left. 

A few doors down the street was a café that looked as though it has been there since the 1960s. He made sure he sat in the section served by the younger woman on staff. In Sherlock's experience women over fifty were much more difficult to charm information out of, so he avoided them whenever possible unless he saw clues to a particularly susceptible or desperate nature. His care was soon rewarded: by his third cup of tea, Tracy was filling him in on all the local gossip, including the various community opinions as to what had happened to Rose and David Klein in 2003. Some of it bordered on the ridiculous, some on the scurrilous. But two telling facts were buried in the vast quantity of dross and Sherlock considered his efforts well rewarded.

In the cab on the way back to Baker Street, Sherlock pondered the corrosive power of pride and the lengths some people would go to in order to retain the good opinion of other idiots.

~ + ~

**Tuesday, January 20**

When Sherlock left the flat that morning, he ensured there was nothing about his appearance that would alert his surveillance to his plans. He did not carry a bag; he was dressed as he ordinarily would for a jaunt around London.

He directed the cabbie to take him to Charing Cross and from there he strolled around the neighbourhood, popping into the National Portrait Gallery, then across the street to the café in the old crypt under St Martin-in-the-Fields. By the time he was sitting with a cup of tea, ignoring the chattering tourists around him, he had identified both of his tails. Unfortunately, he had his suspicions that one of them—obviously an outlier in regards to intelligence for an MI5 operative—might have guessed that Sherlock had “made” her. When she left immediately after finishing her coffee, Sherlock knew he’d slipped up, and that she’d be replaced with someone else he’d have to identify.

After losing his other tail in the catacombs of the gift shop, Sherlock made his way up to the main entrance on the ground floor. He checked the reflection in the glass doors as he pushed them open; the young man he’d lost hadn’t caught up yet, but Sherlock couldn’t take any chances.

Traffic in the A400 was stopped for the light, so he darted between two buses and across the road to the side entrance of the National Gallery. He ducked into one of the rooms and mingled with the tourists, eventually allowing the crowd to drag him into the Sainsbury Wing. As he made the turn on the staircase to the lower level, he glanced behind him and saw only a group of Italian teenagers comparing photos on their mobiles. Sherlock made his way out the back entrance to the busy A4.

Feeling exposed, he crossed over to Canada House. Two minutes later he was in a cab, bound for Heathrow.

One hour and three cabs later Sherlock strode into International Departures, and within thirty seconds knew it had all been a waste of time. _Bloody Mycroft_ , he thought to himself as he strode across the concourse. He'd gambled that Mycroft wouldn't inform MI5 of his plans for India; being sold out by his brother was a disappointment, but not much of a surprise. 

Sherlock ruefully acknowledged that MI5 had terrible timing in finally sending someone competent after him. This time he didn’t see them, which he found disturbing, but he felt their presence all around him: the skittering sensation across his skin of the almost tangible attention. The susurration of bodies aligning themselves to his in a slowly tightening, invisible phalanx as he approached the BA check-in desks. As he joined the line, a pair of them, obviously dressed to look like businessmen but failing just enough, took up positions behind Sherlock.

“If you would come with us, sir,” the man on the right said.

“And if I don’t?”

“You wouldn’t want to make a scene, Mr Holmes,” the other replied, as bland and benign-seeming as his partner.

“You really haven’t been briefed, have you?” Sherlock gave them each a fake smile as the line shuffled forward.

“I can assure you we’re prepared for all eventualities,” Mr Right said.

“You were trained by my brother, weren’t you? I always know; it’s the tell-tale smugness.”

The man didn’t respond other than to arch an eyebrow, itself such a tell that Sherlock wanted to laugh.

Mr Left glanced ahead to where the line turned; following his look, Sherlock saw another pair who appeared to have been made in the same mould as his two companions. A glance behind confirmed his suspicion that another pair guarded against escape in the other direction.

“So, does Mycroft teach the mandatory twitches and tells with the sense of entitlement? Because I know you weren’t raised with it in Dalston.” Sherlock turned from left to right. “And Salford.” 

The man appeared to be genuinely amused, which definitely meant they were MI6 instead of MI5, because Sherlock had never met a policeman without a chip on their shoulder when dealing with someone who wasn't working class.

“If you would come with us, Mr Holmes,” Mr Right repeated. Sherlock could tell he was barely suppressing his desire to grab Sherlock’s elbow and steer him out of the line. The line shuffled forward again and the trio reached the turn, where the other minions waited, both sticking out like Puritans in a brothel. Sherlock wondered how they could yet be invisible to the crowd of tourists surging around them bent on finding their gates, arguing about luggage, and engaging in the kind of strife that ordinary people seemed to think was an essential component of overseas travel.

As Sherlock engaged in a rather boring staring contest with Mr Right, another pair of clone agents appeared near the rope. “Am I supposed to feel flattered? Eight of you just to collect me?”

“There’s considerable interest in ensuring there’s no delay.”

That was a surprise, and Sherlock felt the first glimmers of unease in the pit of his stomach. “Not Mycroft, then. Interesting. Why would I—? Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Sherlock was bored of it already. With a grimace, he stepped over the webbed rope and strode off toward the entrance. The two men who had been guarding the far side of the crowd fell in on each side of him and by the time they’d reached the doors he was effectively surrounded.

“The privileges of celebrity,” he muttered as they handed him into the back of the standard Intelligence services black town car.

It took approximately eighty minutes to reach the now familiar MI5 building where he’d been stored between Christmas and his aborted eastern adventure. For all he knew, he was even held in the same cell. There was lunch waiting for him, which he ignored.

An hour later he began to wonder when they’d haul him out for another pointless sparring match with Doctor Deborah. It would have at least broken the boredom for a while.

Six hours later by his guessing, there had still been no contact. No Doctor Deborah, no Mycroft, no anything and Sherlock was starting to feel as if this was going to be his future: long spells of boredom at Baker Street, interspersed with short stretches of boredom in dungeons. It wasn’t a future he anticipated with any relish. He thought it unlikely anyone would be coming for him then, so he curled up on the reasonably comfortable bed and tried to sleep.

But the quiet hours allowed The Issue to return to front of mind. Sherlock had held it at bay for the last day or so as he tried to distance himself from it with the Klein case, then preparing for his departure. Now that his distractions had been taken away, it was back knocking at his consciousness, demanding attention. He still didn't want to think about it. He still didn't know _what_ to think about it.

His mind was still divided between blaming Mycroft for leading John astray, and questioning why John would have allowed it to happen in the first place. The man had spent five years ignoring Mycroft. Why had he decided that now was the time to start paying attention to his clumsy manipulations?

Sherlock suspected that his first instincts were correct: John was afraid for his family, strange as the idea seemed on first examination. And the prospect of anything to do with Moriarty coming back into their lives must have triggered John's protectiveness, which was never far from the surface.

In the end, Sherlock had to admit that John's reaction, from a viewpoint that Sherlock didn't share but had to acknowledge existed, was understandable with the baby due any day now. But it was damned inconvenient, and Sherlock had no idea of how he was going to overcome it.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, January 21**

The next morning a silent and terrifyingly competent looking middle-aged woman brought him breakfast, which Sherlock also ignored. She reciprocated by ignoring all his questions other than his inquiry as to the time. Her accent was American, which was the first amusing thing that had happened since his aeroplane had turned around almost three weeks before.

“California?” he asked and her only response was The Cocked Eyebrow that Sherlock was beginning to suspect Mycroft demanded all Intelligence agents master in order to earn their kill privileges. She graced him with a lovely if slightly sinister smile, then left without another word.

Sherlock drank the tea on his tray, had a quick wash in the tiny cubicle in the corner of the cell, then sat on the bed to await the inevitable tedious harangue from his brother, or whoever he’d delegated the task to.

Just over an hour later, another pair of identikit agents escorted him up through the layers of the building back to civilisation. He was not at all surprised that they didn’t escort him _out_ of the building, but into a medium-sized conference room. At one end of the long table that filled it sat a middle aged man who could have been a Mycroft clone: about the same age, height, build and degree of baldness. It was like meeting Mycroft's _true_ brother, as if there'd been a switch at the hospital: Mr and Mrs Holmes' first-born swapped for another couple's child. Sherlock wondered if the man had a strangely unlike (and much better looking) brother, as well. The minions waited in the doorway at the far end of the room and the not-Mycroft glanced pointedly at the chair across from him. With a sigh, Sherlock sat and the two of them stared at each other for a few seconds before the other man spoke.

“You look nothing like your brother.”

Sherlock noted the man's accent. Hampshire, then Harrow (probably). “Well, one of us had to get the looks.”

The man gave a short chortle and leant back in his chair. “Let’s by-pass the preliminary chit-chat.”

“Yes, let’s.”

“Who were you planning to visit in India?”

“An old enemy.”

The man seemed not at all fazed by Sherlock’s response. “To what purpose?”

“To get information.”

“What information?”

“The information you and my brother are refusing to give me.”

“And what information would that be?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t have to go to India. You’re really quite bad at this, aren’t you?”

The man ignored both the insult and the question. “Let me be more specific, then. What was the subject matter of the information you were seeking?”

“Moriarty, of course. Do you really not know what’s going on? I thought Mycroft—”

“Why of course?”

Sherlock ensured his answering sigh carried a melodrama rating of at least seven out of ten. “Moriarty is my assignment, is it not? The great mystery that I was brought back from my punitive suicide mission to solve. The one I’m apparently expected to solve without any data at all.”

“What makes you think there is any data? Any data not already given to you, that is.”

“There has to be more.”

“In my experience, Mr Holmes, in Intelligence work there is very little ‘has to be’. My understanding is that your brother shared all our information on the man and his associates while the two of you were planning your bold escapades a few years ago. If he is denying you anything he’s since acquired, well, that’s between you and him.”

Sherlock thought that was the worst attempt at diversion he'd ever encountered in his entire life, so decided to ignore it for the moment. “You work for him.”

“Hardly.”

“Then you’re trying to bring him down. Ah, so it’s you behind—”

“Again, hardly.”

“Why not? Now would be the perfect time.”

For about two seconds, the only response was a complex but unintelligible series of expressions arose on the man’s face, which confirmed his role to Sherlock, if not his name. “While I would never insult you by pretending to warm feelings for your brother, I would be the first to admit his value to the government of this nation.”

The man's tone clearly communicated _for the time being_ at the end of that sentence. “But is he worth the price?”

“I don’t follow.”

Sherlock strongly suspected he did, but wasn’t in the mood to argue the point. “He has a value. But he carries a price. We all do.”

Sherlock was surprised by the laugh he received in response; it seemed genuine, which was surprising in itself considering what the man was. 

“Very astute observation. But then, that’s your forte, isn’t it?”

“My purpose to you, you mean.”

“Of course. We’re not pretending with each other, are we? And to answer your question: yes, very much so. Or he would not be where he is.”

“And what about you?”

The man’s expression closed down, just for a moment, but long enough to tell Sherlock he’d committed some sort of faux pas. “While I cannot speak to the accounts of my superiors, the fact of my continued engagement certainly implies that the answer is the affirmative in my case as well.”

“And me?”

“Your books are maintained and balanced by others, who rarely share their accountings. So I’m afraid I can be of no help to you in that matter.”

“Ah. You’re just following orders today, then.”

“The bureaucrat’s lot.”

Sherlock was willing to bet a lot that the accountings for all of them were held by Lady Smallwood. He knew there was no way on heaven or earth that she would waste him on a wild goose chase such as this was turning out to be. Sherlock found this to be one of the more confusing aspects of his current situation. Who was really in charge? And why did they not want Sherlock to succeed in his mission? The answers that he'd assumed all along made no sense if Lady Smallwood was in the driver's seat, though. She knew how much she owed Sherlock for getting rid of Magnussen, not just for her own sake, but for the country’s. 

And if she was directing this farce, then there was a chance Sherlock might come out of it alive. For she must know that Mycroft would have at least three ways to take her down if anything happened to Sherlock and would act accordingly to protect him or, failing that, avenge him. 

Sherlock wondered why he was even in the room; they could have just taken him back to Baker Street without all this melodrama. He wondered if they were trying to intimidate him. The idea was ludicrous, of course. Or maybe the man was trying to send some sort of cliché message about how powerless Sherlock was supposed to be. Maybe they were trying to “teach him a lesson”. Whatever the reason, Sherlock was fed up: the withholding of data, the poorly executed surveillance, the ham-fisted attempts at physical control.

Eventually, the other man broke the silence with the faintest hint of a sigh. “I’ve often wondered why Lady Smallwood did not approach your brother for assistance.”

“She knew he wouldn’t help her.”

“Perhaps. I can’t imagine he had any fondness for Magnussen, though.”

 _The real conversation begins at last._ Sherlock shrugged. “With Mycroft, anything is possible.”

“Truer words were never spoken.” The man chuckled and Sherlock wondered at his brother's shared history with the man.

“Are you the person who decided that Deborah Oppenheimer was to be my 'handler'?”

“No, that was Lady Smallwood's decision.”

 _Aha!_ Sherlock suppressed a triumphant smirk. “But you approved.”

“It was not my place to approve or disapprove.”

So, the man worked under Lady Smallwood. But which service? The man looked too _posh_ , for lack of a better word, for MI5; the resemblance to Mycroft was striking: the mannerisms, the tone that spoke of assumed unquestioning obedience from all around him. Something beyond the ordinary public school arrogance that afflicted the higher levels of the security services. For a moment Sherlock regretted not having paid more attention when Mycroft had gone off on his tedious rants about inter-agency rivalries within the security services. For if he had, Sherlock might be able to unsettle the man in front on him by showing that he had deduced who he was.

With a supercilious sniff Sherlock leant back in his chair. “Do you tend to be sent off on a lot of flunky assignments?”

“Oh no, I volunteered for this one.”

“Why?”

“I thought it was time for us to meet.”

“And why should I want to meet you in particular?” _There, I've given you your opening. For god's sake take it so that we can finish this farce and be home in time for lunch._

The man gave Sherlock a familiar quick flick of a smile. “Commendably to the point, as per your reputation.” Sherlock didn't bother resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “I wanted to make a request.”

“Why not just give me an order? It's more your usual mode of operation, isn't it?”

“Sometimes, yes. But you have a certain reputation when it comes to following orders. And this request relates to a matter outside the ordinary course of business.”

“You want me to spy on my brother for you.”

Sherlock knew he'd landed a direct hit the moment the words penetrated the man's ears. But to give him all due credit, the man recovered beautifully and almost instantaneously.

“Of course not. Why would we waste your talents on such a mundane task?”

Sherlock noted the complete lack of protest at the nefarious/unsporting/downright ungentlemanly act that he'd mentioned, and gave the man a knowing smirk which Sherlock could see the man wanted to return, but didn't. “So what exactly did you want to ask me?”

“To spy on Detective Chief Inspector Gregory Lestrade.”

Sherlock laughed, long and loud. “Are you serious? You think spying on Mycroft a waste of my time but spying on Lestrade isn't? For god's sake, the man works for the Met; you don't need _me_ to spy on him.”

The man gave him a thoughtful look. “No, perhaps not.”

The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds, then the man waved over Sherlock's escort. “It's been a pleasure, Mr Holmes.”

“That's it?”

“Yes.” The man glanced at the two men flanking Sherlock's chair before meeting his eye again. “You were expecting—?”

“I was expecting something interesting. Or at least useful. I can't imagine why you bothered.”

“Can't you?” The man gave him a look that shifted from penetrating to slightly dismissive. “No, I suppose you can't.”

Sherlock stood. “Give my regards to my brother the next time you see him, at your club for mutes. You can practice your semaphore skills.” He turned and marched out the door, his guards on his heels.

Just under an hour later Sherlock strode up the staircase at Baker Street, serene in the knowledge that things were just as he'd thought they were: Lady Smallwood thinking she was in control, MI5 trying to take down Mycroft, and Mycroft resisting with everything he had. And whoever it was that had brought Sherlock in was desperate enough to try and turn him against his brother. Mycroft had been right: he was surrounded by goldfish. They'd made the mistake of exposing their plans to Sherlock. Coming out into the open to pursue him had confirmed that someone was acting against Mycroft, thereby weakening their position by giving Sherlock a confirmed target. Not that there was much Sherlock could do about it right now, other than solve the “Moriarty” situation as soon as possible. Then he and Mycroft would turn their attentions to whoever was responsible. It had been a while since the brothers had hunted together and Sherlock felt a _frisson_ of anticipation at the thought.

~ + ~

**Thursday, January 22**

For the next day or so, Sherlock contemplated his situation. As it appeared that going to India himself wasn't an option, he was going to have to find an alternative method of communicating with The Woman. One that would be secure from MI5 surveillance.

Mycroft would be of no help, of course. Though Sherlock knew his brother was aware that she was alive, he wanted to maintain the current fiction between them that she was nothing more than an unfortunate episode in his past, gone and buried and never to be acknowledged again. No, he would have to find his own way to her, and in order to avoid compromising her new identity he couldn't lead MI6, and consequently the CIA, to her door. All electronic forms of communication were out of the question, so it would have to be good old-fashioned correspondence. Sherlock tried to remember the last time he'd written an actual paper letter. He'd probably been at university; the moment the internet had arrived, he'd grabbed onto the new technology and not let go since.

He dug around in John's desk and eventually found a small notepad. He didn't bother searching the flat for an envelope; he knew he'd find nothing like anywhere, so he called down to Mrs Hudson for some.

Then, supplies in hand, he sat down to write Irene. He stared at the blank sheets for five minutes before allowing himself to be distracted by the problem of how to get it to her without calling anyone's attention to the fact that Sherlock Holmes, a man known to live totally in the modern world, was _posting a letter_. Getting it out of Baker Street would be no problem; Mrs Hudson could post it for him. She was proud of having never touched a computer in her life and still lived an entirely analogue life. Her posting a letter wouldn't strike anyone as worthy of notice, but he remembered she was likely being followed as well. Then the solution struck: Lestrade. Lestrade could drop it in some random post box in his daily travels, and as long as he was discreet about it, no one would be the wiser.

Eventually, he hit upon a chain of custody that would eventually get the letter to Irene. Two blinds should be sufficient, he reasoned as he called Lestrade and told him that he'd solved one of his cold cases and could come by later to collect.

Four hours, six cups of partially drunk tea, approximately three miles of pacing and Sherlock finally had what he thought he wanted to say to Irene. He was just addressing the outermost envelope when he heard Lestrade clumping up the stairs.

The man stood in the doorway, looked around the flat and declared, “What a dump. Don't you ever clean up in here?”

“What?” Sherlock glanced around. The flat looked as it always did. “I need you to do something for me.”

“You told me you solved one of the cold cases.”

“Yes. But in exchange for the solution, you need to do a favour for me.”

“Hold on. Me giving you those cases _was_ the favour.”

“Your accounting is shoddy, Lestrade. One tiny favour in exchange for closing a twelve-year-old cold case. And you want to quibble.”

Lestrade sat on the sofa, his horrible black raincoat billowing around him, then rubbed his face with the heels of his hands. “What is it?”

“I need you to post this for me.” Sherlock strode across the room and held out the letter. “And not a word to Mycroft.”

“That's two favours.”

“Two dead Kleins, two favours.”

Lestrade looked up at him, holding his eye for a few seconds before reaching up and taking the envelope. “Yeah, whatever.” He looked at the address. “Who's Inspector R. Prakash? _New Delhi_?”

“Someone who owes me a favour.”

“Can't you just email—? Wait. Isn't this the Indian copper you helped when you were away?” He paused and held the letter up, fingering along one of the edges. “He's playing courier for you.”

“I thought you said coppers hated political cases. 'The worst' you said, if memory serves.”

Lestrade sighed. “Yeah, all right.” The envelope disappeared into the Coat of Horror. “So. Cold case.”

Sherlock sat in his chair and picked up the folder for the Golders Green case. “Rose and David Klein, mother and son. Both killed by gunshot wounds, same weapon. Small calibre handgun at close range, shot in the family home. No sign of a break-in or struggle, only a few things missing, so it's unlikely to have been an interrupted robbery.”

“So why was anything missing?”

“Someone wanted the police to think it was a robbery gone wrong, but couldn't face disposing of anything actually valuable. So, most likely another family member.” Sherlock held up one of the scene photos for Lestrade to see. “David Klein was killed by a shot to the chest, just to the right of his heart, nicked his pulmonary artery, died very quickly. See, he's sitting in the lounge. Shot from the front. No sign of resistance; he knew his killer and didn't consider them a threat.”

Sherlock dropped the photo and picked up another. “Rose Klein. Shot in the chest as well, but at an upwards angle. Exit wound here.” He pointed to a spot near the base of the back of his neck. “Shot at very close range judging from the powder deposits on her clothes and skin.”

“So she was standing and the killer was sitting nearby.” Lestrade walked over and took the photo from Sherlock. “The original team would have figured that part out. She was killed in the kitchen; so the killer was sitting at the table.”

Sherlock made a _tsk_ -ing sound. “And John says _I'm_ bad about people. Think, Lestrade. How did it happen? What was the sequence of events? Someone murders one of the Kleins and the other just stands there and watches it happen, makes no move to defend themselves and waits to be killed as well?”

“Maybe the son was home with the murderer. Someone he knows. He gets murdered, the mother comes home and the murderer kills her, too. Or she's just come home and doesn't know her son's dead in the next room. Or she's just found the body and was trying to escape.”

“She was shot from the front; no sign of a struggle.”

“Right.” He took a step closer to Sherlock's chair. “About this close, then.” He glanced down at Sherlock. “Family. You said family tried to make it look like a burglary. The husband, most likely.”

“The husband was out with the other two children.”

“Could be anyone, then. Friend, neighbour. Any hint Rose was maybe playing around behind the husband's back?”

“This obsession with sex, Lestrade. Most unbecoming.”

“Not obsession, twenty years of detective work.”

“As usual, Lestrade, you see but—”

“Whatever. So, fill me in, genius.”

Sherlock could tell he was trying to pass it off as a joke, but was too weary to make much of an effort. “Look at her hands.”

Lestrade examined the photo again, then held out his other hand for the file. There were more close-up photos of the bodies and in two of them the woman's hands could be seen. “Yeah, okay, her hands. What about them?”

“For heaven's sake. Look at her right hand. Callus on the inside of the middle finger. She was right-handed. Most people use their dominant hand for virtually everything. Now look at her left hand. What do you see?”

“I see her left hand, Sherlock.”

“Her left hand is dirty, Lestrade. Look at the autopsy report. Traces of meat. Chicken. She was preparing dinner. Her right hand—”

“No chicken.” Lestrade had found the report halfway through the file. He held out his hands, thinking. “She would have had a knife in her right hand, so no meat traces.”

“She would have handled it with her right hand at some time, taking it out of the wrapping, something.”

“Someone cleaned off her hand.”

“Whoever tried to make it look like a robbery.”

“Probably the husband.” Lestrade caught Sherlock's eye. “To remove the powder traces. Amateur mistake. So. Murder-suicide. Jesus. Why?”

“The answer to that isn't in the file, unfortunately. I can't be 100 percent sure—”

“No! Really?”

“Sarcasm again, Lestrade,” Sherlock responded to the other man's grin. “I suspect it might have been because David Klein was homosexual and his mother didn't want anyone to know.”

“His mother murdered him because he was gay? That's ridiculous. It was 2003, not 1853.”

“Lestrade, you're missing the human element.” Sherlock paused as the man gave off an almighty snort of derision. “Even today, people in the neighbourhood talk about her as if she was some sort of community patron saint, wise woman, the perfect wife and mother to three perfect children. You know the type: the first person on the barricades to defend against changes to the old ways, the person everyone went to for advice, the person who organised things that needed to be organised. People respected her, but they feared her at the same time. If she didn't like you, you were shunned because no one wanted to be on her bad side. Righteous to the point of farce. Now I think about it, she sounds like Mycroft remade as a middle-aged, working class Jewish housewife.”

“She was ashamed of him.”

“She thought people would see his homosexuality as some sort of defect, something that would reflect badly on her. Or maybe he was threatening to come out of the closet and everyone in the community would find out. Who knows. But she killed him. And then once the deed was done, remorse caused her to kill herself.”

Lestrade put the autopsy report back in the file and dropped it on the table in front of the sofa. “I wouldn't want to be the one to tell the husband.”

“He already knows. As you said, he's the one who found them, cleaned her up and got rid of the gun.”

“Most likely, yeah, but how can you be sure? We're not going after the husband for tampering with a crime scene on just a 'most likely'.”

Sherlock stood and pulled a photo from the file, a close up of Rose Klein's face, side-on. “Here.” He pointed to a spot near the edge of her hairline. “Blood, smeared. Just a small spot, but telling. The wound splatter wouldn't get there; her chin would have blocked it. Someone handled the body and missed a trace of blood when washing their hands, or did it before they cleaned themselves up. Then they touched her there.”

“Her hair. He ran his fingers through her hair. Saying good-bye. The poor bastard.”

“Indeed.”

“I'm glad I'm not the one who has to re-interview him.”

“Send Dimmock.”

“God, no. That's asking for a lawsuit. I'll send Elliot. People always think she's sympathetic because she's a woman, so they don't get their back up so fast.”

“I've met Mr Klein; I doubt he'd respond well to a female officer. Or pretensions of sympathy. Carter, maybe. Someone older.”

“Done.” Lestrade stood in the middle of the room, looking uncomfortable.

“Yes?”

“What?”

“There's something you want to say?" 

Lestrade looked embarrassed and Sherlock didn't bother suppressing the sigh the look elicited.

“Not really. You doing okay?”

“I'm fine, Lestrade. Do you want me to 'pee in a jar', as well?”

“Really not necessary. I've seen you high often enough to know when you're using. You seen John and Mary recently?”

“Whenever I speak to Mary she asks if I've seen you. The two of you need to co-ordinate your surveillance better. Or just go visit them yourself; you don't need me as go-between. Offer to be god-father; I certainly don't want to be asked.”

“Yeah, like anyone'd ask you to have any kind of responsibility for a kid.” Lestrade chortled at the apparently hilarious notion. “Well, I'll leave you to the rest of them, then.” He pointed at the other folders on the floor. “Though I've got to say, I'm almost looking forward to what you ask for in exchange for those.”

“I'm sure I'll calculate a worthy price for each.”

“No doubt.” Lestrade gave him a tired smile, then headed out the door.

~ + ~

**Friday, January 23**

“So, how's your week been?”

Sherlock stared across the small office to where Doctor Deborah sat behind her desk. “Let's not pretend, shall we, Doctor.”

“Okay then. I'll tell you about my week.” She settled back into her chair with a satisfied smile. “I had two meetings at Thames House. Both about you. For people uninterested in letting you do the work you're supposed to be doing, they're strangely invested in my reporting on your lack of progress.”

“I've long suspected the security services have been taken over by accountants and 'management consultants'.”

“I know. It's like an OFSTED inspection. Sometimes it seems like they get offended if anyone wants to do any actual spook work.”

“They think they can leave it to the IT people.”

“Professional arse coverers.”

“Did you see Mycroft? Speaking of arse coverers.”

“Why would I see him? He's nothing to do with any of this.”

“Don't you believe it. You're all working for him in the end. I think even the Queen works for him, now.”

A strange expression flitted over her face for a moment. “You really don't know what's going on, do you?”

“Of course I don't! No one will tell me anything.”

She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair while Sherlock huffed and pulled his coat tighter across his chest, then dipped his chin into his collar to hide the smile he was wholly unable to suppress.

“This is just between us. No blabbing to your little doctor friend.” Sherlock gave her a look. “Okay, your other little doctor friend. Edwin Blythe— Do you know who Edwin Blythe is?”

Sherlock gave her an irritated dismissive wave, as if he could not care less who Edwin Blythe was. If she wasn't going to admit that she knew about his little staycation at Chez MI5 earlier that week, he figured he might as well play along.

“He's been— Well, the best-known non-secret around Whitehall for the last five years or so is that he's been trying to undermine your brother. Anyway, if he isn't being actively helped, then he's been encouraged by the foreign secretary, to make a move against him. Now that your little Christmas present to the universe has buried him up to his eyeballs.”

“Whitehall gossip. Who cares. Give me something of substance or let me go back to London.” _Though it's nice to have a name to go with the face._

“I don't have anything for you. And trust me, I'm no more pleased about that than you are.”

“Why is there still nothing? This makes no sense.”

“Really? You can't imagine a scenario where MI5 might want complete control over you while preventing you from doing anything of value? You're assuming they want you to succeed at this supposed caper.”

Sherlock slotted that information alongside what he had deduced from Blythe's rather clunky hints and a few of the gaps in the picture were filled in. “Sedition, doctor. Isn't that fatal in your line of work?”

“Oh, probably.”

“Strange attitude for a spy.” Two previously unrelated notions sidled up to each other in his mind and shook hands. “Do you think MI5 brewed up the Moriarty video?”

“I don't think so. The social media angle on this has been too well organised for it to be MI5. They're completely ham-fisted when it comes to anything like that. Did you see their recent job adverts? Pathetic.”

“Ah, social media. Who do you think is manipulating the current conversation?” Sherlock had to admire her _nous_ ; someone her age understanding how useful Twitter could be for organised troublemaking was surprising.

“It all seems rather pat, don't you think? The 'it's all a fraud, haha, look how ridiculous it is, if it was really Moriarty it would be slick and flashy, so it's obviously a fake'. That's too—”

“Convenient. And then when people have moved on to the next thing—”

“Boom.”

“And who pays the price for not having solved it in the meantime,” Sherlock mused, appreciating the deviousness of it. “Is your being appointed my handler part of the 'setting me up to fail' plan?”

“Probably.”

“Who did you annoy, then? Must have been someone important to have been handed this particular poisoned chalice.”

“Oh, hell, who knows? They've never known what to do with me. That's the problem with the security services. They're like greedy children, grabbing things, people, resources, data, with the thought that at some point in the future they might have some use for them. And sometimes the resources become more trouble than they're worth.”

“And they have to be got rid of.”

“Somehow, yes. They've been trying to bury me for years, but I keep digging myself out. Maris says I have nine lives.”

“So leave.”

She chortled. “Do you really think anyone gets to just leave this job? No, they either kill you, destroy you, or use you up and throw you away. And if you complain they destroy you. They have hackers who can put anything on your computer, your phone. Then they send in their minions in the Met to find it. And there you are, all sorted. No, you learn to play some version of the game just in order to survive.”

“Or you destroy the game entirely.”

“The fantasy of every discontented agent, let me tell you.”

Sherlock chuckled. “Would you like to try?”

She gave him a considering look. “If I were of a mind to, I'd definitely want you on my team. Mycroft, too.” She laughed at Sherlock's grimace. “No one knows the board better than the game maker. But he's too invested. No, I think we have to play our way across somehow.”

“So what do they have on you, Doctor, that they can force you into this particular corner?”

“Why do you assume they 'have something'?”

“Doctor—”

“No, really. But it's—”

“Complicated?” Sherlock hated when people called things “complicated” when they weren't at all. And even more he hated when people he thought were reasonably intelligent disappointed him by doing so.

“No, not really. It's not so much complicated as difficult to explain. At it's heart, the story is simple. But long. Fairly detailed. Large cast.”

“Sounds dull.”

“Oh, god, yes. In the extreme. And I lived through it.”

“Highlights?”

“There aren't any. Just forty years of boring slog, interrupted by short periods of pestilential people being magnificently boring. The blackmail bits are almost interesting, but not really.”

“Why would someone blackmail you?”

“Oh, they're not anymore.” 

She showed her sharp little teeth and he laughed. “I see.”

“I doubt that very much. Anyway. Enough about me.”

“Well, I've got nothing to report.”

She gave him a long, flat, telling look that silently answered many of the questions he'd had on his arrival. But she moved on to continue the farce they'd apparently agreed to play. “Other than keeping yourself busy by de-bugging your flat twice a day.” Sherlock smiled into the collar of his coat again. Either she was an exceptional liar, or she was being hung out to dry with him; his opinion on which continued to vacillate through the conversation. “There were a number of people at Thames House extremely interested in that. I think they may have even formed a committee to 'strategise'.”

Sherlock laughed. “Anything to gum up the wheels of the bureaucracy.”

“You're keeping a few pasty-faced Oxbridgians employed, just in resolving the 'surveillance question'.”

“Consider it my contribution to keeping the unemployment figures down.”

“For which the Chancellor is grateful, I'm sure.”

“Wouldn't want any of Mycroft's chums out on the street, going feral, would we?”

She laughed and picked up her cigarettes and lighter. “Smoke?”

“Certainly.”

He followed her through a door at the back of the office into what he presumed was the basement of their living quarters, up a flight of stairs and through the kitchen to a large conservatory that spread across the entire rear of the house. She closed the sliding glass doors behind her and opened two windows. “The wife's at a conference until Sunday. Plenty of time for it to air out. And I hate smoking in the rain.” She perched on the ledge near an open window, lit up, then tossed him the pack and lighter. Sherlock sat on a rather ratty chintz sofa and plonked his feet onto a small glass-topped table. He leant back, sending smoke rings up to the ceiling.

They made their way through their cigarettes in a companionable silence while Sherlock pondered who might have wanted to blackmail Doctor Deborah in the past, and if this really did have any bearing on her current situation: Shanghai'd into acting as handler to an agent who, to all appearances, was being set up for a fatal failure in some ridiculously convoluted plot against his brother. It was depressingly typical, really. Even now, with Mycroft forcibly out of the picture, the nonsense around his work was still the driving force in Sherlock's life. It would be funny if it weren't so bloody tedious.

“How are your friends? The ones with the baby.”

“Incipient baby.”

She waved a dismissive hand before stubbing out her cigarette. “How are they coping with the situation?”

“What situation? They're having a child, not conducting hostage negotiations.”

“Please don't try to tell me that what happened at Christmas has had no effect on your relationship with them.”

“John was a soldier for over a decade. He's seen people killed in front of him before. Done it, I dare say. And Mary. Well, she wasn't there.”

“Has your doctor friend ever seen you kill before?”

“Must we? Really, doctor.”

“I'm curious.”

“The last manifestation of your 'curiosity' was a tedious conversation about my brother. Please spare me your 'professional interest'.”

“Well, we have to make it look to your watchers as though we're having a real conversation. What do you propose we do to fill the time? Play Scrabble?”

“I'd slaughter you at Scrabble.”

“Not bloody likely. I speak five languages.”

“Oh, multi-lingual Scrabble. How's your Albanian?”

“How's your Yiddish?”

They smiled at one another.

“Not Scrabble then.” She closed the window and drew her knees up to her chest, her expression pensive. 

Sherlock suddenly imagined her as a young girl, in the same stance, watching telly in a 1960s suburban semi, mother in the kitchen, father mowing the postage stamp-sized lawn. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope. My parents married late, and the lucky things ended up with only me.”

“What did your father do?”

“You once criticised me for telling you my wife was a physicist. Now you're asking about my parents?”

“Professional curiosity.”

“You're just trying to avoid the inevitable Scrabble massacre.”

“Perhaps.”

“You still haven't answered my question.”

“No, Doctor, I do not speak Yiddish.”

She gave him a mock glare.

They stared at one another for a minute or so, until she sighed and headed into the house. When she returned she dropped a glass on the table next to Sherlock's feet and half-filled it with whiskey.

“Hardly professional conduct for doctor-patient relations.”

“Says the man who keeps insisting he's not my patient. And fuck professional; I want a drink. After all, the wife's away until Sunday evening.”

He held up his glass in salute. “To unprofessionalism and absent wives.”

She returned the salute, then took a sip. She stared into the glass for a few seconds as she rolled it between her hands. “Has he pulled away, your friend?”

“I'm sure that's none of your business. Seeing as you're not actually my doctor.”

She didn't reply. Sherlock proceeded to make his way through her quite good whiskey, while staring out across the back garden.

“You know what I want?” she asked, breaking the strained silence.

“Nope.”

“I want you to come out of this alive.”

Sherlock started. He was strangely flattered by the words; he suspected she might even mean them. The sentiment made him a little uncomfortable, though. “Why the change of heart from last week?”

“If you die, Blythe wins. And I really don't want Blythe to win.”

He held up his glass again. “To the disappointment of the odious Blythe.”

She held hers up as well. “Hear, hear.” She drained it. “I feel like tossing this in the corner, but Maris would kill me. Her mother gave us these.”

Sherlock inspected the cut crystal in his hand. “I can understand why you'd want to smash them. They're hideous.”

“Expensive things almost always are.”

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wondering what Mycroft was up to this week? Find out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/16034719).


	4. The urge to chase and destroy

**Saturday, January 24**

The next morning Sherlock lay on the sofa after a particularly irritating tête-à-tête with Mrs Hudson, who once she'd started complaining about something to do with her bins, Sherlock had drowned out entirely until she'd stood next to him and poked him in the shoulder repeatedly until he started paying attention. He hoped it wouldn't become a habit; her fingers were quite bony and pointy and he was sure the bruise would last for days.

He didn't want to, but he succumbed to something akin to a sense of duty and gave his mind over to contemplating the events of the previous few days, particularly the MI5 circus that was taking over his life. The sojourn at the secure facility, now that he reviewed it all, had had a hint of inevitability about it. They'd given him his rope, lulled him into the misapprehension that they'd just stand back and allow him to do as he pleased. But like a running dog that's forgotten the chain, he'd been jerked up at the end of his lead. His little overnight stay and the sparring session with the man he now knew was Sir Edwin Blythe had been the reminder of the exact perimeters of his freedom. The rest of it: the politics, the cloak and dagger nonsense, the manoeuvring, those did not interest him at all. And while he tried to get his brain to engage with them—as he knew he should for his own survival—the subject matter just wouldn't take.

Eventually he gave up and wandered over to the pile of cold case folders, still waiting for him on the floor by his chair. He reviewed the particulars of each in his mind. With a sigh he grabbed the three folders documenting the case of the missing girl from Leeds, thinking to while away an hour or two picking apart the shoddy 1970s-era Met casework.

Two hours later, he was pulling on his coat and heading out the door for a quick jaunt up the road to St John's Wood. After all, Lord's was only a ten minute walk from Baker Street and he needed to get out of the flat for his own sanity's sake.

As he approached the westernmost point of Regent's Park, he heard the call to prayers go out from the London Central Mosque, incongruous in its environs of 1980s office buildings on one side and manicured parkland on the other. He continued up Park Road, past St John's Wood Church and on to the Grace Gates, at the south-eastern corner of the Lord's site.

The first bloodstained clue to the girl's disappearance had been found here, at the moderately busy intersection on Wellington Road. He stood on the pavement and looked around him. The large hotel across the street was obviously newer than 1971; he wondered what had been there before. None of the Lord's buildings overlooked the intersection. Anyone could have come and dropped the handbag unseen or unnoticed late at night, back in the days before London's ever-present CCTV. Sherlock wondered if the site had any real significance. He remembered from the file that the DI heading the investigation at the time thought that it had, but then it was obvious from the file that the man had been an idiot.

Sherlock proceeded to walk the perimeter of the site, tracing seeming miles of high walls of dun-coloured brick, towering stands and office buildings hugging the boundaries of the site on its southern edge. The western end of the site was blocks of flats, most of which appeared to be more recent than the crime. The surrounding neighbourhood was residential. There would have been traffic. Not foot traffic but some cars, even at night. But St John's Wood had always been a fairly staid, quiet corner of London. Anyone could have dropped the bag late at night unseen if they'd taken some care to not draw attention to themselves.

After returning to Baker Street, Sherlock went back to the file and cursed the Met for the lack of photos of the bag in situ. The file only gave a vague description of where it had been located. He felt keenly the lack of proper data. He dug further into the file, following later notes in another hand, to the first interview with the parents. They had been forwarded to the Met from North Yorkshire Constabulary in Leeds, the day after the parents had reported the girl missing.

Sherlock perused the dates: the date the girl had travelled down on the train (August 5th), the date the parents reported her missing (August 8th) and the day the bag had been found (August 10th). Either the killer had had the girl for days before killing her, or had purposely waited for days after killing her to leave the first clue. Or, more strangely, he'd waited until he knew the parents had reported the girl missing. The latter scenario suggested a killer toying with the police, or more interestingly, toying with the girl's parents.

Sherlock closed the file and leant back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. Lestrade had done well with this selection, he thought as he settled in for a long think.

~ + ~

**Sunday, January 25**

The next morning, Sherlock set out for Southwark and the Imperial War Museum, where the second clue in the missing girl case had been discovered. As the cab dropped him off at the small park in front of the building, Sherlock confronted the two huge, 15-inch guns mounted in the plaza in front of the old Georgian hospital that now housed the museum. He ambled up the pathway leading to the guns and wondered how much the surrounding trees had grown in the last forty-five years. For other than the museum itself, no other building currently had a view into the plaza due to the trees, and he needed to know whether or not that would have been the case in 1971. He pulled out his phone and googled the average annual growth rate of _Platanus x acerifolia_. 

He approached the plaque at the base of the guns and pretended to read as he wondered at the murderer's choice of site. The man obviously been attempting a “statement” of some kind by leaving the girl's bloodied skirt draped over one of the guns, but had failed miserably. There was no connection to the military in the girl's family, based on the notes from the third DI's attempt at solving the case. The victim's father had been too young to serve in the war and both her grandfathers had died in the preceding decade. If there was a meaning behind the selection of battleship guns as the place to leave a murder clue, it was only apparent to the murderer himself. Other than confirming that, as with the first site, it would have been easy for the murderer to leave the item behind without being observed, the visit had been a waste of Sherlock's time.

He turned and pondered the building in front of him. He had never had much interest in history museums and had never been in this one; the glorification of war and overt acts of patriotism annoyed him as among the most stupid of human forms of expression. But he indulged his curiosity and entered the building.

As he wandered the halls, he watched the crowds around him. The displays held little interest for him, but people-watching was rarely a waste of time, so he watched as pensioners and school groups, leavened by the occasional off-season tourist, milled around. The younger members of the crowd seemed more interested in their phones and taking selfies of themselves and their friends; the elderly seemed nostalgic for the detritus of war and romanticising the deprivations of their childhoods.

As Sherlock looked around, the one thing he did not see much of was people of an age to be current or recent members of the services, other than some of the teachers leading school groups and museum staff. He wondered if John had ever visited.

As soon as the question appeared in his mind, he knew that John wouldn't have. The man had spent years trying to forget, and seemed to have no curiosity about the wider political or historical context of the war that had almost killed him. And John, more than most, knew there were no glories in war, other than perhaps the tiny personal victories that were never celebrated in war museums.

Sherlock felt uneasy. The place, the crowd, the atmosphere of foreign and unsympathetic values pressed in upon him and he had to leave. As he approached the guns on his way back to Kennington Road to find a cab, he noticed a couple bent over to read the plaque. Sherlock smiled and wondered when MI5 agents would clue in to the fact that a person's back could be just as recognisable as their face, regardless of a change of clothes. He resisted the temptation to tap the man on the shoulder and say hello, and continued on his way.

In the cab back to Baker Street, Sherlock wondered what John was doing, both in that moment and in general. Well, in general, he thought that his friend would be doing what he needed to do to protect his family. But that moment, a rainy Sunday afternoon, Sherlock didn't know. And he should know, he thought. There was a time when he would know, for most likely John would be sprawled on the sofa at Baker Street reading the papers or a book, while Sherlock worked on an experiment or composition. Or they'd be somewhere in London on a case.

John should be with him, Sherlock thought. Mary needed him, but not as much as Sherlock did. He needed him on this case. He hadn't missed him so much on the Golders Green case; it had been quick and easy once he'd found his way into the family's secrets. But Sherlock suspected that this one wouldn't be like that. There was something going on in the background that he couldn't see, like a sudden movement almost caught out of the corner of the eye that disappeared the moment you turned your head. All Sherlock's instincts told him that this was the vital clue, the password to the solution. And that it would be something blindingly obvious the moment it was found. So he needed John with him, to force him to focus on the obvious and remind him that sometimes the simplest answer was the correct one. Moriarty's words came back to haunt him for the thousandth time: _That's your weakness; you always want everything to be clever_. Sherlock shook the thought away; clever was what he was, what he did. But even he had to acknowledge now that sometimes the data and the algorithms weren't enough on their own.

He reassured himself with the knowledge that there was no way that John could argue that working on a forty year old cold case where all the principals were likely dead could pose any threat to his family. It was the perfect thing to draw John back: a fascinating puzzle to watch Sherlock deduce, with no possible consequences to anyone involved. Sherlock smiled as he paid off the cabbie and strode into 221B. Things would be back to normal, and not a moment too soon.

~ + ~

**Monday, January 26**

After half an hour of ineffectual flapping about, Sherlock had to admit that housekeeping really wasn't his forte, as if there had ever been any doubt in the matter. John was coming over and Sherlock remembered Lestrade's comment on the state of the flat when he'd arrived. Sherlock didn't want the conversation with John to focus on such trivialities, so he'd made what he considered to be a decent effort to tidy the place up at bit. Though he drew the line at hoovering or attacking the pile of dishes in the kitchen sink.

When John arrived that afternoon, Sherlock noticed he looked on edge, which wasn't a good sign. The uncomfortable silence while John stood in the doorway of the flat, giving it a once-over, was disheartening.

“It's not as bad as I expected,” John said as he moved a pile of journals from the sofa and sat.

“Why does everyone think I'm incapable of being tidy?”

“I lived with you for three years, Sherlock; I know just how messy you are.” John shifted slightly and Sherlock was not happy to see that his friend didn't seem to want to meet his eye. “But I'm guessing that's not why you asked me to come over.”

“No.” Sherlock paused, suddenly and inexplicably nervous. For an instant he pondered working around to the subject matter, giving John a chance to feel a little more comfortable being in the flat again, then dismissed the notion as ridiculous. “It's about a case. No—” he cut off the protest he knew was coming based on the irritation on John's face. “Not Moriarty. Nothing to do with Moriarty. One of Lestrade's cold cases.”

“Sherlock—”

“There's no risk to anyone, John; it's forty years old and anyone related to it is most likely dead. It's perfect—”

“Sherlock—”

“John, it's a fantastic case. Missing girl, no witnesses, it's like she just vanished. Bloody clues left all over London—” At John's startled expression, he clarified. “Clues covered in blood.”

“I did wonder.” Sherlock was glad to see the beginnings of a smile on the man's face.

“Honestly. I need your help on this.”

John sighed and for a moment Sherlock thought the tide might be about to turn. “You know, one of my commanders told me never believe any statement that begins with the word 'honestly'.” He paused and Sherlock's hopes dropped as he saw John struggle for his next words. “You know— I _hope_ you know—” Sherlock could see the man's mind teetering on the precipice and he held his breath, not wanting to accidentally push him the wrong way. And then John chose that way, regardless. “I just don't see how I can, not right now.” 

Sherlock knew he should pause, let John convince himself to change his mind, as he knew the man eventually would. But he couldn't help himself. “There's something about it. I— I'm missing something obvious.”

“So you 'need' someone not a genius to help you see the obvious.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to agree, then saw John wasn't joking, so shut it. And he saw that John saw him do it, and knew exactly what he'd almost done.

“Well, I supposed it's nice to be wanted.” 

Sherlock's heart sank at the tired but resolute tone. “There's no risk involved, if that's what you're _still_ worried about.”

“Sherlock, I—”

“Why are you objecting? This is the perfect case. No danger, flexible hours, no living villains to chase.” Sherlock shrugged. “Probably.”

“I— I just can't. Right now. I'm working crazy hours. And with the baby—”

“Is that going to be your excuse for the next twenty years?” He mimicked John's voice. “The baby, the baby.”

John gawped up at him, dumbstruck, for a few seconds. Then he stood, his shoulders hunched in the posture that had always struck Sherlock as simultaneously aggressive and defensive. “You are way out of line. I—” An ugly, sour look took over John's face as he turned to head for the door. Just inside the doorway he turned back. His face was red with anger and the Judgement Finger was out again.

“Stop telling me what to do, Sherlock. Ever since you pulled that fucking trigger everywhere I look _someone_ is telling me what to do and what to think and I've had enough already. Mycroft, you, Mary, everyone. Just fucking stop, okay? Goddammit, I'm not a child. I led men in battle, for fuck's sake! I am capable of thinking, you know, but you'd never know it the way you go on. 'John do this, John do that, John shut up and do what I say like a good boy.' Well, the answer's no, Sherlock, I'm not going to just bloody well do what you say, okay? Actually, I don't care if it's okay or not. Because— No. No, I'm not—” His anger suddenly ran out of steam; his clenched hands fell to his sides as he sat on the sofa with a groan. “Oh, fuck it.” He dropped his head in his hands.

Sherlock stood stock still in the middle of the flat. One part of his mind marvelled at the novelty of being, possibly for the first time in his life, entirely at a loss for words. The other part of his mind recoiled at what John had said. For the next minute or so they stayed as they were, a tableau of mutual incomprehension and unease.

“You've been talking to Mycroft again,” were the first words that came to Sherlock's mind and they hopped out of his mouth like anxious toads before he could stop them.

John's response was muffled, as he didn't bother looking up. “Not since Boxing Day. Stop trying to make this someone else's responsibility, Sherlock. Jesus, did you even hear what I said? This is my decision. Stop trying to make me sound like an idiot child. And I told you before I'd talked to Mycroft.”

“Um, no, you didn't.”

“Yeah, I did. Not my fault you weren't paying attention.”

“Er, no, I don't—” Sherlock paused as he realised he was just proving John's accusations. John looked up at him expectantly, seeming to wait for Sherlock's next blunder. Then he surprised even himself. “I'm sorry.”

“What?”

“I said I'm sorry. Were you not listening?”

“You apologised.”

“Yes, that's my understanding of the word 'sorry', that it commonly—”

“Sherlock—”

“—forms the principal component of an apology.”

“Sherlock—” 

“What?”

“You apologised.”

“Oh, here we go again. Yes, John, I apologised.”

“You never apologise.”

“Well, I just proved you wrong there, haven't I?”

“No, really, in all the years I've known you I've _never_ heard you admit you were wrong, much less apologise. For anything.”

“Of course I've admitted I was wrong; I know I've done so quite recently, as a matter of fact. And I must have apologised at least once in the past.”

“Nope.”

John was almost smiling now and Sherlock felt as though he'd just emerged from deep water, having escaped a vicious undertow. “I think you'll find, that on—” 

“Nope. Never once.”

Sherlock gave a melodramatic sigh as he flopped down onto his chair. “Fine, then, have it your way. Consider this a brand new Sherlock Holmes, if it makes you feel any better. A man full of contrition—”

“Why don't you quit now you're ahead?”

Sherlock observed John, still seated on the sofa, his hands clasped between his knees. Sherlock didn't want him to go, but didn't know how to make him want to stay. All his old enticements had lost their power.

“This is just temporary, you know,” John finally said, breaking the returning tension.

“What is?”

“This. With Mary and the baby. Once the baby's born and we get settled in, things'll be a bit more normal. And once Mary's back at the clinic, I can cut my hours a bit. But right now, with me having to work so much, and taking care of Mary, I just— There's not enough hours in the day, Sherlock. Give it a few months.”

Sherlock didn't know what to say to that. It wasn't what he wanted, but it was better than John shouting at him about Sherlock treating him like a child. He knew there was nothing _to_ say in response; it was all so unarguably rational and adult.

After John left, Sherlock reviewed all the facts of the case again. No, it was perfect. The perfect case to bring John back to him. So Sherlock decided to put it aside. It could wait; the girl had been missing for forty-four years. A few more months would make no difference to the case at all.

~ + ~

**Tuesday, January 27**

Sherlock was weighing his options in regards to the remaining cold cases as Mrs Hudson stood in the middle of the room holding up wallpaper samples and burbling on about the soothing properties of green. Sherlock weighed the three folders for the dog war murders in one hand, in the other the two folders for the jewellery shop robbery and shooting. The dog case promised a greater challenge; the jewellery shop case a greater chance of a satisfactory resolution and the possibility of acquiring new data to supplement the Met's frankly appalling investigative work.

“What do you think, Sherlock?” Mrs Hudson held up a square sample as if it were a fig leaf.

“Palm leaves? It would feel like living in the lobby of a seedy Los Angeles hotel, circa 1982.”

She swapped hands. “How about this one?”

“Second rate Morris knock-off. It looks like something Mycroft would have in his loo.”

She held it up in front of her and tilted the sheet to catch the light from the window. “Well, I like it.”

“Feel free to use it in your own flat, then. Paper any room of mine in it and I'm moving.”

“Well then maybe I'd get a tenant who knows how to make their own tea and clean up after themselves.”

Sherlock was about to protest that he'd just tidied up the day before, when his phone rang. Mary. He was tempted to leave it; he knew why she'd be calling and he wasn't in the mood.

“That's probably Mary.” Mrs Hudson said as she pulled another sample out of the pile on the table. “She said she was going to ring you this morning.”

“I wonder why MI5 bothers with agents when I've got all of _you_ spying on me. Who keeps the surveillance files, I wonder. Probably Lestrade.” He gave her a glare as he answered the phone. “Yes.”

“Another friendly greeting. Good morning to you, too.”

“John's left for the clinic, I see.”

“You'd rather have him shout at you some more?”

“So it's your turn to shout at me now? Wonderful. Did you all get together and collectively decide to start channelling my brother, or did you each come to the decision independently?”

He heard a barely suppressed sigh at the other end of the call. “That's not why I rang, actually. But if you want to talk about it, I'll listen, I guess. If you're civil about it.”

“How kind. But no, I have no desire to discuss your husband's—” _Abandonment_ was the word Sherlock almost spat out before realising it would be another conversation-killer. “Reticence.”

“John has a lot on his plate right now. And he's worried.”

“John does not need to worry about me—”

“Oh, get over yourself, Sherlock. He's worried about me. My due date was two weeks ago and he's been fretting ever since at my child's inability to keep to a schedule.”

Sherlock snickered a little. “It may have been—not a good idea to tease him about his concerns.”

“No, you really shouldn't have. But you're talking to the wrong person about it.”

“Oh, Mrs Hudson would just worry and wring her hands if I told her we'd had a disagreement.” 

The woman looked up from her samples at the mention of her name. She was making a very poor attempt at hiding that she had been listening, but Sherlock couldn't be bothered to go to the bedroom to get away from her.

“I think she knows already. By the sounds of it, neither of you were exactly quiet.”

“Ah. That's why she's hovering.” He gave his landlady a fake glare, which she waved off before holding up a hideous green and burgundy stripe. She laughed at his horrified grimace.

“What are you doing over there?” Mary asked.

“Mrs Hudson is threatening eviction by wallpaper.”

“Considering what you're already living with I don't want to imagine what'd drive you away. Anyway, the reason I called is I wanted to know if you knew about your stalker.”

“Which one?”

“The one that's following you all over London and posting photos of you looking pensive in front of artillery.”

“There's still a few of Anderson's tribe about.”

Sherlock could feel Mary's hesitation through the phone and wondered what she didn't want to tell the people who were listening in. “This one doesn't feel like a fan. Definitely more 'I know what you did last summer' type thing.” 

He wondered at the reference before dismissing it as irrelevant; he was sure he'd caught the gist of her point, regardless. “And you think this person might be a threat?” 

“Impossible to say. You should check it out, though. Why were you at the Imperial War Museum?”

“Cold case. The one John refuses to work on.”

“If there's a military angle, maybe—”

“No, it doesn't. Just a tangential connection. A clue left there by the killer. Anyway, what's the address of the account?”

getsherlock. Very cute, he thought with a wry grimace. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mrs Hudson hold up a sample with gambolling kittens with florid green and pink bows around their necks.

“I brought this one just to see the look on your face,” Mrs Hudson said, laughing at his gobsmacked expression.

“That deserves the death penalty.”

“What?” Mary asked. “A bit melodramatic for some photos.”

“No, no, not you. Mrs Hudson trying to scar me for life with the supposed threat of frolicking kitten wallpaper.”

“Ooo, ask her to put it aside for me. I might want to look at it for the baby's room. John refuses to countenance pink. Are the kittens pink?”

“The kittens are kitten-coloured, from what I can see. Though some of the bows are, indeed, pink.” Mrs Hudson held up the sample with an excited look on her face, then put it aside.

“I think I can get away with that. Well. I should go. I just wanted to let you know about that account. There's something not right going on there.”

“Probably just another deluded fan. Still, it's always good to know about the lunatics.”

“Because you do have form for attracting them, don't you?” The teasing was obvious, so Sherlock didn't take too much offence.

“I doubt Moriarty has come back from the dead to Instagram-stalk me.”

“No, not likely.”

After they'd signed off and Mrs Hudson had apparently had her fill of wind-up by wallpaper, Sherlock brought up the Instagram account. Flicking through the photos, he soon understood Mary's unease. While he didn't consider himself an expert on art or visual literacy, there was something unsettling about some of the photos. 

To start, they were all taken while he was about London working on cases. All of the locations were recognisable and none were random shots of him away from Baker Street. There were shots of him on Finsbury Road, talking to Mr Klein, and in the cafe flirting information out of Tracy. There were photos of him in St John's Wood and at the War Museum, inside and out. Of course, the photos could just be a curated collection of him at work, but nothing in the account metadata indicated that. In fact, there was no useful information attached to the account at all. But someone wanted Sherlock to know that they were following him, and in a very specific way. There were no shots of tracing him to these places, so whoever was taking them must know the significance of these locations and activities.

Sherlock pulled out his phone and sent a text to Lestrade: _Who did you tell about the cold cases? SH_.

He continued to scroll through the photos as he waited for Lestrade's reply. On further examination of the Golders Green photos, and a quick look on-line, he determined that the photos had been taken from a sandwich shop near the Klein's restaurant, on the other side of the street. 

The photos at the War Museum showed a bolder approach. They were taken from multiple locations, both inside and outside the building, tracing his progress from the plaza where he was seen looking at the plaque near the base of the battleship guns, through the galleries inside.

So his stalker was a stranger. If he'd seen someone he knew—one of his MI5 tails, for instance—he'd have caught them immediately, especially as he'd been scanning the crowd. Or the person had been disguised, but not an obvious disguise or Sherlock would have noticed that, as well.

Lestrade's answer eventually arrived: 

_No one other than M.  
DCI Greg Lestrade_

_Mycroft_ , Sherlock fumed. But when he calmed down and thought about it for a moment he realised the idea was ridiculous. Mycroft hated anything to do with social media and had lambasted it in total on more than one occasion to Sherlock. And he would never let Sherlock know that he was following him. The following itself would, of course, be conducted by one of Mycroft's legion of minions; the man himself would never bestir himself from his various Whitehall lairs for field work of any kind, much less common-and-garden surveillance work. No, nothing about this spoke of his brother's touch. He had another “fan” by the looks of it, one who seemed desperate for his attention. _How derivative_ , he thought. _Another homage to Moriarty_ , was the next thought that popped into his brain, and Sherlock filed it away into his disturbingly thin mental file on the Moriarty case he was supposed to be working on with no real data.

Sherlock replied to Lestrade: _Interesting quirk in one case, come by tonight. SH_

_Can't. Busy. Tomorrow aft.  
DCI Greg Lestrade_

_Date? SH_

_Still none of your business.  
DCI Greg Lestrade_

Sherlock smiled and turned back to his computer.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, January 28**

When Lestrade arrived the next evening he bore fish and chips from John's favourite place, and as they ate Sherlock showed him the photos on the Instagram account.

“Yeah, that's pretty creepy. You've got yourself a first-class stalker there.”

“Yes, Lestrade, I had managed to deduce that myself. The question is who. Who knows about the cold cases? It's as if they know where I'm going before I get there.”

“Maybe they're just really good at following people without them noticing.”

“Who? Who could track me multiple times without— Ah. Two people, at least.”

“Maybe. Maybe someone used to disguising themselves. Someone trained to track and not be noticed. That's more likely than them being psychic. Sounds like SIS to me.”

“They're already following me. How many sets of spooks do they need? Unless it's another agency entirely.”

“What, like MI6?”

“No, more like the CIA. But they're idiots; they can't hide to save their lives. They always dress the wrong way, to start.”

“But how would they know where you're going? I haven't told anyone even the names of the cases I gave you, not even your brother. Just that I gave you four cold cases.”

“If they're as good as they seem to be they don't need to know where I'm going.” Sherlock steepled his greasy fingers under his chin, then distractedly cleaned himself off with a handful of paper napkins. “There's no lack of suspects, and that's not taking into account private contractors.”

“Could be whoever did that Moriarty video.”

“That thought did occur.”

“If they're clever enough to take over the entire broadcasting system—”

“Yes, certainly. Or hire a professional.”

Lestrade smiled. “Maybe you have a bounty hunter after you.”

“You watch too much American television, Lestrade.”

“God, I wish I had the time to watch TV. Strategic operational planning sessions, they're breaking my—” He paused and looked embarrassed for a moment. “Lots of big brass getting into conniptions about the election, making life just that little bit more 'fun' for us.”

“The internal administrative hells of the Met aren't relevant to this issue.”

“'Course not.” He gave Sherlock a rueful almost-grin and pointed at Sherlock's computer, currently showing a group of photos of him at the War Museum. “So. You've been working on the missing girl case. I hope you crack that one. Her parents are probably dead by now, but missing persons cases are horrible. People not knowing—”

“Yes, yes. I was, but I'm putting is aside for now. I'm starting on the jewellery shop shooting.” Sherlock turned and gave him a nasty smile. “And a certain Detective Sergeant worked on that one, didn't he?”

Lestrade glowered for a few seconds while he gathered the fish and chip wrappers and stuffed them into the carrier bag. “Yeah. One of my last cases as a DS. Surprised they even gave me the promotion after that one, I made such a stink about it.”

Sherlock pulled the folders out from under his chair. “The file is a textbook in appalling, inadequate investigative procedures.”

“Yeah, Thompkins was the DI. He was as old school as they come. Famous for hating paperwork. I mean, we all hate it, but he just flat out refused to do it, constantly getting called on the carpet for it. He thought it was all bullshit, all the 'modern namby-pamby nonsense' he called it.”

“Like not arresting people just because you don't like the look of them. Not that the Met still doesn't encourage—”

“Ha ha. No it was the men gathering evidence, paying attention to the crime scene, not intimidating witnesses just so they'd blurt out the first name that came to mind, that kind of 'modern' police work he hated.”

Sherlock flipped through the first folder. “He sounds like a prince among men.” He drew out a photograph showing James Robichaud, lying in a pool of his own blood in the office at the back of his shop. Sherlock held it up. “Why are there no close-up photos of the body?” He held up a photo of the shop from the exterior. “Who thought _this_ would be of use to anybody?” He rummaged through the file for his next exhibit of Met incompetence.

“Sherlock, let it go. It was fourteen years ago. And yeah, Thompkins was a throwback and the forensics were crap.”

“Compared to this, Anderson is, well, _me_.”

Lestrade chuckled, then sobered. “Thompkins thought he had his murderer. He thought he could beat a confession out of him, so why bother collecting actual evidence, eh?” He held up a hand to hold off Sherlock's protests. “What's done is done. No point moaning about it now.”

“You've given me half, no, one tenth of a case file. How am I supposed—?”

“You wanted something to investigate, so go do the investigation yourself. I'm not Thompkins. I won't invent evidence for you by pulling it out of my arse, so just go out there. Do what it is you do.”

It had been a long time since Sherlock had seen Lestrade this agitated. “Your date wouldn't sleep with you last night.”

“Fuck off, Sherlock. For someone who claims to have no interest in sex, you spend a lot of time speculating about other people's sex lives.”

Sherlock didn't bother answering and hid his disdain by turning to the second folder. He ran his eye down the list of suspects and stopped when he saw two he recognised: Nick and Nigel Bowman. They'd been identified by one DS Lestrade as potential suspects, being men with long criminal records for breaking and entering, theft, drug possession, and on top of that were old friends of Alan Robichaud, the victim's son. “You identified the Bowman brothers as persons of interest.”

“Yeah. Real arseholes those two. But Thompkins refused to believe the robbery was a targeted hit, so he refused to follow up on it.”

“Thompkins was bent, as well as incompetent.”

“The two usually go hand in hand, yeah. But his name never came up in any internal investigation; not even the usual rumours, and if someone's bent usually everyone else knows about it. Doesn't mean he wasn't, mind. But he never seemed clever enough to keep something like that hidden for thirty years, I don't think. And six months later he retired. It was his job I was promoted to.”

“So you inherited his team.”

“And most of them I traded off for men who weren't chuckleheads or bent arseholes. Got Donovan that way, traded Micheals for her. God, he was useless; had to wait years before I found anyone stupid enough to take him off my hands. Fletcher hates women _and_ blacks, so he couldn't wait to shift her once he'd got the bump up himself.”

Sherlock circumvented this digression into Met team-building procedures by ignoring it. “But you went after them once you'd been promoted to DI.”

“Says so right there, doesn't it. But Nick was already in Florida. As you know.” Lestrade gave him a knowing look. “Never did figure out how he managed to get into America with his record.”

“False papers. But he was an idiot and lived there under his real name.”

“Yeah, I suspected as much. You come across him while you were there?”

“Only by reputation. He was already dead. Actually, he was one of the two men killed by Frank Hudson in 2004.”

“Huh. Funny old world, isn't it? Nige is still around I think. Last I heard he was in Pentonville, but that was years ago.” Lestrade paused and Sherlock let him have his little trip down memory lane; it might prove useful instead of just irritating, for once. “I always liked Nigel,” Lestrade continued as Sherlock rolled his eyes at the other man's wistful tones of reminiscence. “Decent enough bloke. Nick was a real hard case. Thought he was the next Ronnie Kray, as most of those arseholes do.”

“But they were never questioned in regards to the Robichaud case.”

“We brought Nigel in; the bosses weren't interested in jumping the hoops they'd need to get Nick extradited. We didn't get anything out of Nigel. He was a good man with alarms and security systems, locks, safes, you name it, but never with the violent stuff, I don't think. That was Nick's job. If they did it, Nige probably just disarmed the alarms and broke into the safe, and then stood watch outside. But he's broken into a lot of shops in his life, and he's not the brightest bulb in the pack, so he probably didn't even remember that break-in anyway. Hard to say. He's good at keeping his mouth shut, too.”

“Why is that not in the file?”

Lestrade looked puzzled and held out his hand for the folders. Sherlock handed them over and watched as Lestrade flipped through them. “The interview transcript should be in here.” He looked up and met Sherlock's gaze. “This file has been tampered with. Fuck me.” He looked to the front of the first folder, comparing the docket list to the contents of the file. “The second interview with the son's missing, too.”

“One of your bent arseholes.”

Lestrade sat back in the chair. “Sometimes I really fucking hate this job.” He held up the folders. “Like when I see shit like this. The first investigation was bad enough without people culling out the few bits of decent work done on it.” He rubbed a hand over his face.

Sherlock tried to recollect the last time he'd heard Lestrade swear so much in such a short period of time. Probably the last time he'd caught Sherlock high.

“Sorry Sherlock. If I'd known the file was anything like this I wouldn't have bothered.”

“You didn't review them beforehand? Thank you for your high regard for the value of my time.”

The other man didn't bother trying to hide the smirk that crossed his face for a moment. “Well, if nothing else it'll keep you busy for another day, starting the whole damned thing from scratch.”

“I would have had to anyway. But I'd have preferred to have at least a little clean data to start with.”

“Yeah, well.” Lestrade shrugged.

The two astonishingly disappointing folders seemed to taunt Sherlock from the table. He sensed he should perhaps feel more motivated, but in that moment he felt no real interest in the pale imitation of a case. His mind knew it was an inferior form of distraction. But until John came around this was all he had to help keep him from going mad (or worse), so he would just have to make the best of it.

~ + ~

**Thursday, January 29**

After his conversation with Lestrade, Sherlock couldn't bring himself to face the Robichaud case until the next day. Unfortunately, the case was just as depressing on third viewing as it had been on the previous two and it was the most he could do to muster any enthusiasm for it.

It was a disheartening enterprise; his description of it as textbook documentation of incompetence had not been an exaggeration. As he spread out the records of both aborted “investigations” he noticed a distinct air of resignation about the whole thing. The reports of the first investigation could be called sketchy at best, and Lestrade's characterisation of the forensics as “crap” was generous, in Sherlock's opinion. The missing transcripts of Lestrade's interviews were more troubling; someone had actively sought to destroy evidence in an open murder case. While there were wider implications to those absences, Sherlock really wasn't interested in pursuing them; the last thing he needed was to be sidetracked into chasing down ghosts of Met corruption. Dealing with the incompetence would be bad enough.

Soon after he began pinning up pictures and making notes on the reported sequence of events that night, he realised there was something distinctly off about what he was seeing in the file. The lack of data meant he couldn't put his finger on the exact cause of his unease, but something about the supposed timelines didn't make sense. So he threw on his coat and headed off to do what Lestrade had suggested: begin the investigation from scratch.

Twenty minutes later he was standing on the pavement of New Bond Street, texting Lestrade to ask for the locations of any CCTV cameras that had been on the street in 2001. The Robichaud's shop was still in existence, still on the same corner. Through the window he could see a security guard, two staff members and a small group of women he supposed to be customers. Sherlock didn't want an audience when he spoke to the manager, so he didn't enter the shop. 

He strolled around the side of the building and into the narrow alley that ran along the backs of the shops. The surrounding buildings did not appear to have changed since 2001. He noticed that there seemed to be more foot traffic in the neighbourhood than there would have been fourteen years before, probably due to the invasion of mid-range American chain shops into the previously exclusive neighbourhood.

Sherlock ambled down the short alley, observing the plentiful private security cameras. He wasn't surprised to see that the narrow space was tidy, with only a few small bins and no cars. The doorways were all empty and standing near the back entrance to the Robichaud's shop he could see that there was nowhere to hide a man, much less a get-away car.

Leaving before he drew attention to himself, for he knew that some of the private security cameras would be monitored, he returned to New Bond Street and rang the entry bell to gain admission to the shop. The door buzzed open and he entered, ignoring the scowling attentions of the security guard. The man had all the hallmarks of the borderline criminal thugs that generally made up the staff of certain security contractors. Two older women speaking to each other in Ukrainian were being served by a young woman with traces of a Polish accent. An older woman standing behind one of the counters gave him a reasonably discreet once-over as he crossed the store towards her.

“Good afternoon,” he opened.

“Good afternoon, sir. How might we help you today?”

Sherlock glanced around him and noticed that the shop had been extensively redecorated and the layout changed since 2001. When his attention returned to the woman he could tell that she recognised him. She didn't say anything, though; Sherlock decided to make an adjustment in his approach as a result. He put a slightly shifty expression on his face as he approached the counter.

“Mr—”

He held up a hand to cut the woman off. “Thank you, but—”

“Of course.” She gave him a wink, instantly catching his supposed meaning. “Is there something in particular you're looking for?”

“A gift. For a new baby,” he replied, dropping his voice.

“I see.”

They discussed the strange array of trinkets that people apparently thought appropriate to fob off on new parents and Sherlock forced himself to be civil through his impatience, as he observed the operation of the shop. The two Ukrainian women left about fifteen minutes after he'd arrived, and no other customers entered the shop before he left. After a few minutes of well-mannered verbal dancing around each other, he found out that the woman serving him was the manager and co-owner, a Mrs Robichaud. Sherlock assumed she was the wife of the dead man's son; according to the file she had been an employee of the shop at the time of the murder. She was attractive in a conventional and bland way; there was nothing notable about her other than the fact that she was dressed in bright red from head to toe, including nail polish and lipstick. Even the large stone on her left hand was a ruby.

Sherlock commented on the ring as she placed a tray on the counter. “That's an impressive ruby. Is it your engagement ring?”

She held out her hand and glanced at the ring with proprietary affection. “Oh no.” 

“It's a very fine colour.”

She gave him a flirtatious smile that made him want to recoil a little. “That's very kind of you. It's far from the best, though. Not like a pigeon's blood ruby,” she added with a low sigh. “The colour could be better. It was my tenth anniversary gift from my husband, so of course it has sentimental value. But it's not my engagement ring. That's a wonderful pink diamond. A lovely ring. But I don't wear it as often as this one.” She gave her ruby another loving glance.

She held out an ornamental silver teething ring. “Are the parents registered?”

For a moment Sherlock thought she was asking if John and Mary were married, and he almost retorted that of course his friends had done things the right way around: marriage first, baby second (sort of).

He gritted his teeth and made it through another five minutes of feigned indecisiveness before agreeing with her suggestion of returning once he'd found out if the parents were registered somewhere and what was on their request list, then made his escape.

He decided to walk the mile or so back to Baker Street and as he did, periodically checked his Twitter feed for the rumour to appear that Sherlock Holmes was on the hunt for baby things.

By the time he'd finally gone to bed late that night, speculation on which of his friends was about to become a parent hadn't hit the internet yet, and Sherlock added another piece of data to the Robichaud file: Margery Robichaud (neé Poole) knew how to keep a secret.

~ + ~

**Friday, January 30**

Shortly after breakfast, Sherlock was startled to receive a text from Doctor Deborah: 

_Can you come earlier today?  
D.Oppenheimer_

_When?  
SH_

_Early as you can.  
D. Oppenheimer_

_Why?  
SH_

_Tell you when you get here.  
D. Oppenheimer_

When Sherlock arrived at Doctor Deborah's office, she was practically vibrating with excitement. It made him think of a strangely wizened puppy with a new toy and distracted him entirely from the expected battle about the amount of time he was spending on Lestrade's cold cases.

“So, Doctor—”

“News!” she interrupted. “Something has finally happened. And it's a whopper!”

“All right, then.” Sherlock sank into his usual chair and stretched his legs under the front of her desk. “Show me your 'whopper'.”

They snickered and Deborah spun around the laptop on her desk so that Sherlock could see the screen. On it appeared a video player with a file loaded and paused.

“So?”

She gave him a 'shut up and watch' look as she pressed a key and the video began to play. From what Sherlock could see, it appeared to be standard CCTV footage. There was an empty street at night; on the left hand side of the screen a NatWest cash machine could just be seen, glowing in what appeared to be a thin fog. Sherlock checked the identification stamps at the edges of the screen: somewhere on Tottenham Court Road, the night before last, just after 3:00 a.m. After about eight or ten seconds a car appeared on screen and pulled up in front of the cash machine. For a few more seconds nothing happened. The car looked like one of Mycroft's: large, black, probably a Jag, and Sherlock began to wonder if Mycroft or his assistant were about to step out when the rear driver's side door opened and Sherlock felt his jaw drop a little.

Moriarty. In the flesh. Right down to the Vivienne Westwood suit, this time in a charcoal grey.

On screen, the supposedly dead man turned to his left, then his right, looking upward. Then he saw the recording camera and grinned straight into it. He snapped a flashy salute, turned a pirouette on tiptoe, and stepped back into the car. A few seconds later the car pulled away and the video ended.

Sherlock stared at the last still image on the screen. “Where did—?”

“Where do you think? I was called in at the crack of dawn this morning and this was dropped in my lap.” Deborah turned the computer around and ejected a disc from the optical drive. She placed it in a case, then in a drawer.

“Why now?”

“Why what now?”

“MI5. Why are they giving me something now? They've been holding back for weeks and now they decide they're willing for me to actually work this case. What has happened to change their minds?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe they think they have to give you something to keep up the pretence they want you working on it. Even they're eventually going to figure out you might be getting suspicious by now. Or maybe this is just the first thing they've managed to find themselves. Not that they would have had to go looking for it, exactly.”

“Perhaps. Do you think they've been holding back other things? That—” Sherlock shuddered at the thought that a Moriarty had been given the run of London by MI5 just so that they could pretend to Sherlock that nothing had been happening.

“Impossible to know for sure. I—” She began to toy with her lighter. “I'd bet no. If there had been more going on, something would have leaked. There's still enough press snooping around the edges of this story. No, something would have leaked by now.”

Sherlock wondered about his homeless network. Surely Wiggins or someone else would have found a way to get the information to him if a Moriarty was loose in the city. And if anyone would have known, it would be them. “Do you think it's genuine?” He was coming down from the adrenal kick to the head of seeing that face again, the urge to chase and destroy just starting to fade from the foreground of his mind.

“No idea. The powers that be claim it is. But you can imagine what I think of those assurances.”

Sherlock hummed under his breath as he leant back in the chair. The obvious conclusion was that it was a fake. Easy enough if there was some old footage still around of Moriarty. Just replace the date stamp and there you have it: the prime ingredient for widespread public panic if MI5 and the Met wanted it. “Does Mycroft know about this?”

“Unlikely. I'd be willing to bet a lot that telling him would be a career-ending offence right now.”

“Possibly. Probably. How can we find out if it's genuine or not?”

“Well—” Deborah paused. Her expression could best be described as shifty. “I, uh, pulled a few strings. Got a friend who's got access to the right sort of computer things to agree to take a look at it.”

“Computer things?”

“I'm a doctor, not a geek. Pardon me for not knowing what all the bits and pieces are called.”

“And this person, do they have the security clearance to see surveillance material or will I have breach of security of an ongoing SIS investigation added to my list of supposed offences?”

“Supposed offences?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, unfortunately I do. Anyway, 'this person's' name is Christina Martin and she works at the National Archives. And you're getting all rules and regulations with me at this stage of the game?”

“No, not really. I just wanted to see the little vein in your left temple throb like that.”

Deborah paused and graced him with a level stare for a few seconds. As usual, Sherlock was not moved. She sighed. “And not that it's really your business, but yes she does. She's supposedly got clearance to a fare-thee-well.”

“And yet she's willing to work under the table as a favour to you?”

“Oh, no. It's all above board. Filled out the proper forms and everything. She works with Intelligence records, defence records, Foreign Office, that sort of thing. And it's not out of line for people to go to her for advice, assistance with, whatever. Technical things. I don't know, I'm not a bureaucrat.”

“And this person just agreed to hop to our assistance? Should I be suspicious of such bountiful aid?”

“Not exactly. She had to move it up the queue, that's all. And Christina's sound.”

“How did you get her to do that?”

“I reminded her that she owed you a favour.”

Sherlock was puzzled. He'd never even heard the woman's name before; he couldn't imagine how he'd done her a favour, unless— “Ah. She was being blackmailed by Magnussen.”

“Not to my knowledge.” Deborah gave him an impish look. “Though the idea raises all sorts of intellectually stimulating possibilities. No, you caught her brainless traitor of an ex just before he tried to blow up Parliament. Can you imagine the leverage that gave her in the divorce negotiations?”

“She was married to Moran?” Sherlock drew himself up leant forward in his chair. “Really?” He stared at the Schiele hanging behind Deborah's desk and let his mind wander. How had he not recognised the name of Moran's wife? Surely he'd known and had it stashed somewhere. “How do you know her? Is she a spy, too? And how the hell did Sebastian Moran's wife get security clearance to see Intelligence records?”

“To be honest, I'm not sure I want to know. But they've been separated for at least ten years. And no, she's not a spy; she's Canadian. I don't think they do 'spying'. Too busy getting stoned and playing ice hockey, and they have the Americans to do their spying for them. And I met her through my wife; there's a family connection.”

“If she's Canadian she'll be boring, they always are. I have no interest in working with more boring people.”

“Are you calling me boring? Compared to my colleagues, I'm absolutely scintillating. And I never said she was boring. Damned odd, though. And supposed to be some sort of expert on 'digital forensics', whatever that is.”

Sherlock's interest meter ticked up a tiny measure. “Perhaps not entirely boring, then. And potentially useful.”

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd be remiss in not giving a shout-out to S, for giving me the idea for Christina's occupation (and info on the National Archives), and way more information on digital forensics than I could ever legitimately use in a fanfic.
> 
> And if you're wondering what Mycroft, Lady Smallwood and Sir Edwin have been up to this week, you can find out [here]().


	5. They were strangely resistant to the suggestion of naming her Sherlock

**Friday, January 30 and Saturday, January 31**

Sherlock’s train journey back to London, the cab ride to Baker Street, his arrival home—all passed in an ambulatory daze. 

He knew that he needed to remain calm. But the longer he dwelled on there being even the slightest possibility of another Moriarty in London, the more he felt the need to be tearing around the city, ferreting out the contagion. In the back of his mind was also something he hated to acknowledge even to himself: excitement. While the idea fascinated him, he acknowledged that the actuality of it would be disastrous. The threat a Moriarty or an inspired copycat would pose caught his breath in his throat like one of London's old toxic fogs. There was too much at stake for all of them: John and Mary, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson. Even Mycroft, Sherlock grudgingly admitted.

Mary would protect John. Even in her condition, she was a force to be reckoned with and Sherlock knew Moriarty or whoever it was behind the video would underestimate her, which she would take gleeful advantage of if she needed to. She could protect John even better than Sherlock, as she had even fewer inhibitions on what she would be willing to do to protect John and their baby. And Lestrade could take care of himself. Sherlock suspected that for Lestrade's sake, Mycroft might be willing to exert himself a little, if for no other reason than to protect his eyes and ears within the Met now that he'd lost his influence within MI5. Mrs Hudson was Sherlock's responsibility. But of his three friends, she was the one who couldn't know she might be in danger. There was no way he'd submit her to that degree of anxiety just to appease his sense of guilt about having failed to foresee the danger to her the last time.

If there was a brother still alive, if he was behind the broadcast hacking and the CCTV footage, if he was the same kind of threat—if, if, if. Sherlock's head spun with all the possible permutations and combinations of those ifs. Everywhere he looked he saw uncertainty. He had no clear path forwards. Without knowing that the CCTV footage was really another Moriarty, or old footage hacked into the CCTV system, or MI5 playing silly buggers, or something else entirely, or some combination of the above, he couldn't devise a plan of action to keep his people safe.

Sherlock had no interest in waiting for Doctor Deborah's friend to tell them whether or not the footage was genuine; he'd have to use his own resources to find out. 

He'd sent Wiggins a text the moment he'd boarded the train back to London: 

_Thurs. ca. 3 am, Tott. Crt. Rd. Anything unusual?  
SH_

_And by unusual, I mean unexpected appearances by dead men.  
SH_

It would take Wiggins a day or two to contact the right people in the homeless network and get back to him with an answer, so he reconciled himself to a frustrating wait.

And side-by-side with the urge to chase, to attack, was the knowledge that it could all be just a ruse. It could be MI5 trying to distract him, or test him. It could be someone else entirely, using Moriarty's face to lure Sherlock out and make himself vulnerable, to go after him, or Mycroft through Sherlock, as Magnussen had tried to do.

There were too many possibilities and not nearly enough data for him to even begin narrowing down the options for response. Barring access to his brother, Sherlock pondered unburdening himself to Mary. She wouldn't refuse to help him—hadn't yet so far, despite John's objections—but it would put her in a terrible position, going against John's desire to stay out of anything to do with the case.

Sherlock calmed himself with periodic reminders to himself of how easy it would be to fake the video. How many people had it in their interest to construct such a thing with the motive of unleashing another, greater wave of fear and panic into the populace.

Two desires warred in his mind as he sat in his chair, legs folded, staring unseeing into the room: to warn everyone so that they could protect themselves, and to hide this information from them until he could be sure it was real, to save them from the anxiety he knew would result from it. An insidious voice in his head whispered: _John will think you're lying in order to manipulate him into helping you. Do you really want that?_

He needed data. He needed to know more about the provenance of the footage. He needed to know if Mycroft knew about it. Not that his brother would tell him anything, nor admit he didn't know about it already, if that was the case. So Sherlock turned to his current best source of information on all things Mycroft.

Lestrade didn’t answer his text. Sherlock was quite proud of the fact that he waited ten minutes before sending the next; he thought it showed a mature restraint, under the circumstances. When the second text wasn't answered either, Sherlock began peppering Lestrade's phone with texts of escalating urgency and increasing frequency. After two hours and twenty-nine messages, Sherlock stopped, curious about what had happened to the man. 

He wondered if he should go to bed. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, not with this sort of thing fizzing away in his brain. The logical part of his mind, what he told himself and the rest of the world was the _only_ part of his mind, had latched onto the problem and he knew it wouldn't let go for hours, driven by the rising tide of exhilaration induced by the possibility of another living Moriarty. He couldn't allow himself to be swayed by the thrill of seeing that face again. But the possibility of it being fake—while preferable in most ways—just presented Sherlock with a different set of imponderables: how had the person responsible hacked into the Met and Home Office systems? Or had they even needed to? After all, Pentonville, the Bank of England, and the Tower had all fallen through human rather than technical weaknesses. That was just as likely as it having been cooked up by MI5 as part of the absurd game Blythe and his cronies were playing.

The latter situation was the very exemplar of why he’d spent two decades refusing to work with his brother on an ongoing basis: politics and political manoeuvring, while they might appear attractive puzzles from a distance, always ended up nothing more than a bitter taste in his mouth, ephemeral and greasy with disappointment. 

And if it wasn't the dead brother and wasn't a fake? Well, _that_ was a puzzle worthy of Sherlock Holmes: who was the man walking around London with James Moriarty's face?

~ + ~

Sherlock was awakened by the sound of his phone ringing. He untangled himself from the sofa cushions and grabbed it from the floor, where it had fallen from his hand some time during the night. It was Lestrade. “Where were you last night?”

“Still none of your business.” The man's chipper tone belied the now-trite response.

“So you finally convinced her to take pity on you and sleep with you last night. Or did you drug her?”

“Shut up. What did you want?”

“I need to speak to you today.”

“Sorry, can't.”

“Unlike your love life, this is important, Lestrade.”

“Unless you've got something for me, I'm not interested.”

“Oh, so that's how you're going to play.”

“Don't complain; you started it.”

“Yes, I have something for you.”

“And you want something in return.”

“Well, yes.”

Lestrade chuckled down the line and promised to be by later in the afternoon. 

Eight hours later he settled into John's chair. “So, what do you have for me?”

Sherlock folded his hands under his chin. “I may have exaggerated.”

“Exaggerated.” Lestrade stood and headed for the door.

“Do you know anything about James Moriarty appearing in CCTV footage early Thursday morning?”

Lestrade halted his progress, turned on a heel and sat down on the sofa. “Can't say I have.”

“Someone showed me footage yesterday purporting to be him making an appearance on the Tottenham Court Road at three o'clock in the morning on Thursday.”

Lestrade stared at him; Sherlock could see the gears of his mind slowly grinding into motion. “How did the footage get to you?”

“From an organisation that has no interest in helping me solve this case, but holds my life ransom for it.”

“Okay. Do you think it's real?”

“No idea. But this is the first you've heard of it?”

“Yep.” The man's expression was thoughtful, obviously wondering what the implications were of him not having heard anything about it through the highly efficient Met jungle drums.

“Mycroft hasn't mentioned it?”

“Nope.”

Sherlock paused and allowed himself a few seconds to ponder the previously almost-unimaginable. “Do you think he knows?”

“No idea.”

Between them hung the unspoken, frightening prospect of an out-of-the-loop Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock was surprised at his complete lack of exultation at the realisation he was ahead of his brother for once. Then he chuckled.

“What?”

Sherlock waved a hand irritably, though he was more annoyed with himself than Lestrade. “Nothing. I just remembered something.” He paused; the last thing he wanted to do was reveal his meetings with Doctor Deborah to Lestrade. Though he wondered if Mycroft had told the man about them; Lestrade hadn't commented on the fact that Sherlock was never available on Fridays, though that might have been because he hadn't noticed, what with his apparently resurgent social life.

“Uh huh. About your brother?”

“Still none of your business.”

“Very funny.”

They sat in silence, engaged in one of their periodic staring contests that Sherlock found so boring but never seemed to be able to resist, because he always won. Lestrade was in a good mood, he reasoned, as he managed to hold Sherlock's eye for almost two minutes before he broke. “So, you going to tell me about it?”

“About what?”

“The CCTV footage. Moriarty.”

“No. There's nothing to tell.”

“Uh, Moriarty coming back from the dead is not 'nothing to tell', Sherlock.”

“It's obviously a fake of some kind.”

“Well, yeah. Presumably. But you're worried about it.”

“Yes, yes, your observational and deductive capabilities astound.”

Lestrade just grinned at him. 

“Yes, I'm worried about it. Even if it is a fake, whoever created it and deposited it into the CCTV network is no friend. But we can't afford to assume it is fake. I need to see the rest of the CCTV footage from Tottenham Court Road that night.”

“Nope.”

“What do you mean, 'nope'? I need to know if that footage is real or not.”

“You just said it was obviously fake.”

“Let me be more precise, then. I need to know precisely in what way it is fake.”

Lestrade sighed and put on his 'talking to children' expression. “Okay. Let me walk you through this again. I promise to use small words this time. There's two possibilities, right? First possibility: what you saw's actual footage of that location at that time and the other cameras confirm that. Now, knowing what we know about the Met and MI5 doing everything they can short of suspending me to keep me away from this case, you think me going after that footage isn't going to set off every alarm between here and the Home Secretary's office?”

“I could always just ask her for it. It's not as if she doesn't owe me about a million favours.”

“Yeah, right. I'd pay a lot to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Second possibility: what you saw was a fake made by someone who hacked it into the CCTV system. Who do you think has the ability to do that? I mean, the Met and Home Office have the original CCTV footage; who knows what they still have hanging around from when Moriarty was running around London. Way easier to fake it from that than someone else making it up from scratch. So yeah, I start poking around that, I'm up to my ears in MI5 and thanks but no thanks for that.”

“Well yes, obviously.”

Lestrade looked rather proud of himself for getting all the way to the end of his little deduction all on his own, and Sherlock didn't think it was in his interest to tell the man he'd deduced all of this himself the previous evening, so he let the man have his false sense of accomplishment.

“So you're going to be working on this for the next while, put the Robichaud case on hold.”

“I've got nothing to work on without any way to confirm where the footage came from.”

“There has to be another way. Some sort of computer analysis.”

“I may have a line on something, but I'm not sure it will be of any use. I have to wait until later this week. Bureaucrats,” he muttered. “And I've sent word out to my homeless network. Nothing like on-the-ground intelligence gathering.”

“So you'll go back to the Robichaud case, until you find out.”

“Maybe. Will you get me the rest of the Tottenham—”

“Oh for—” Lestrade gave him a long-suffering look and ran a hand through his hair. “I'll see what I can do. Which is most likely nothing. Me getting suspended doesn't help anyone.”

“Especially you.”

“Yeah, especially me. Some of us need jobs to pay our rent, and a disgraced copper has no friends, let me tell you.”

Sherlock shrugged.

After Lestrade had left, Sherlock went back over their conversation, looking for any subtext that would shed greater light on Lestrade's refusal to help him. Until the original Moriarty case three years ago, Lestrade had never seemed to pay much heed to the illegality of the work Sherlock had done for him. Over the years, Sherlock had grown to realise that it was Mycroft's influence within MI5 that had underpinned Lestrade's position with the Met; with Mycroft's own position now imperilled, Lestrade was being more circumspect, regardless of the greater nominal authority he held after his promotion.

While Lestrade's situation was disturbing largely from the point of view of changes in his ability to support Sherlock's work, the situation with his brother was more challenging to accept. Accustomed to two decades of his brother's seeming omniscience, Sherlock had difficulty conceiving of a world where Mycroft wouldn't know of an event such as the CCTV footage. Not that long ago he'd have been Sherlock's prime suspect for having faked it.

But he admitted to himself that one of the fundamental principles of his life had changed on Christmas Day; it was almost as if the laws of gravity had been repealed. Sherlock had to adjust to a world which no longer revolved around the lodestone of power that his brother had once been. Mycroft's authority had been diminished the moment the bullet had entered Magnussen's brain. Sherlock had attacked the Establishment that his brother protected and there was no way the man would be able to escape his share of their opprobrium. Putting aside the performance art duet that was the public aspect of their relationship, Sherlock admitted to himself that he was uneasy with this new world order. But he didn't know exactly what to do about it, and that annoyed him at least as much as the rest of it.

~ + ~

**Sunday, February 1**

Sherlock spent Sunday morning attempting to mediate the war going on in his head between the “Moriarty” situation and the Robichaud case. He wanted to work on the former but had no useful data or leads until either Lestrade or Wiggins brought them. Dwelling on his frustrations was of no use; he needed a distraction. He knew he _could_ work on the latter case, but it was boring in comparison. It was an entirely unobjectionable case (other than the appalling lacunae in the original casework); precisely the kind of intricate puzzle that would normally keep his brain ticking over nicely. But compared to the ever-growing mystery around the “Moriarty” videos (and he ensured the mental quote marks were always present until he had evidence to the contrary), the robbery and murder of a high-end jeweller seemed pedestrian. An honourable but not engaging dinner companion. Working on it would be too much like exercise and not enough like fun. And Sherlock really, really wanted to have some fun. It seemed as though it had been ages.

He allowed his dilemma to swirl around in the corral of his mind for a good portion of the day before the two sides of the battle decided to declare a draw. 

He stared across the room to the photos he'd taken of the Robichaud's shop and environs the evening he'd returned from his field trip to New Bond Street. He'd watched the DVD of the security footage and the contents had conformed to the notes in the file: Alan Robichaud and his then-girlfriend Margery Poole, who worked for his father, had been in the shop when a gang of four men had broken in through the back entrance. They'd tied up Robichaud and Poole and proceeded to ransack the place. When James Robichaud returned from doing the night deposit at the bank, he interrupted the robbery and was shot by one of the robbers just before they fled. The extremely sketchy interviews with Robichaud and Poole conducted by Thompkins' men simply reiterated what was there on the screen.

It seemed so cut and dried. But again, Sherlock felt an irritating, evasive sense of something being not quite right about it all. His inability to pin down this elusive something was becoming truly annoying. He couldn't remember the last time such a fundamentally mundane case had been so opaque to him. His thought processes seemed stymied, off balance.

As he stood in the middle of the room, staring at the wall of photos and maps and printouts of screenshots and post-it notes he realised what the problem was. He'd become so accustomed to extemporizing his deductions, performing them for John, that now he was alone his thoughts were unwilling to connect with each other without the pressure release of this verbal outflow. He suspected that talking to the skull wasn't going to be sufficient anymore after years of working to its interactive replacement.

Sherlock looked back, even over the years he was away, and realised that as he worked he was _always_ talking to John, even if only in his head. But now John had turned his back on him and Sherlock was surprised at how much this had affected his processes. He hated the thought that he was dependent on anyone, even his best friend. He knew that he knew how to do this on his own; he just had to remember.

He stared at the site diagram. He knew that somehow it was the key to the solution. But Sherlock also knew that standing there glaring at it like the statue of an angry god wasn't going to get him anywhere, so he turned back to the case file. As he flipped through the pages, he let his mind co-process, freeing it to follow trails on its own.

At the back of the first folder, Sherlock came across a list of the items stolen in the robbery. He knew little about jewellery, other than his adventure in bogus engagement ring shopping the previous summer, but even he could tell that many of the items on the list would be hard to fence. They would have to be broken down to their component stones and precious metals, significantly reducing their value. One piece alone, a multi-stone ring featuring a blue diamond had been valued at over £50,000 for insurance. Judging by some notes scrawled along the side of the list, token efforts appeared to have been made by Thompkins to determine whether other London jewellers had been offered any of the identifiable stones from the theft. Perusing the list, Sherlock noticed that the most valuable pieces all featured coloured diamonds: a necklace of large pear-shaped yellow diamonds, earrings with pink diamond drops, two rings with rare red diamonds, and another blue diamond, this time a pendant. The more he thought about the list, the more he suspected that Lestrade had been right. The burglary had been a targeted hit. Someone, perhaps a collector, had hired a gang to rob James Robichaud's shop, stealing specifically identified pieces, as well as some smaller, more ordinary pieces to hide the nature of the theft. Someone had wanted to get their hands on his work, but hadn't wanted to pay for them.

 

~ + ~

**Monday, February 2**

On Monday morning, Sherlock felt the need to get out of the flat for a while; he'd spent entirely too much time brooding about Moriarty, about the Robichaud case, about his brother. Even about his Instagram stalker. So he decided to run an experiment. The weather was unusually fine for a London winter day, increasing the probability of getting useful data.

He'd dug around in his costume closet and found an old green coat and shapeless hat, left behind his tell-tale scarf and Belstaff, and sauntered out of 221, heading south. 

As he waited for the light at Marylebone Road he extended his sensory attention outward, as Mycroft had taught him to do so many years ago. In that moment he didn't perceive a watchful eye on him, though he acknowledged that the number of people around strained his observational capacities to their limits. Based on what he'd been able to deduce from the Instagram account, his stalker/quarry was either very good, very lucky, or very well informed as to Sherlock's movements. He anticipated it might take him some time to find them in the surrounding crowd.

Along the route he periodically stopped and pulled out his phone to take photos of buildings, streetscapes and other subjects that to a casual observer would seem entirely random, but which a trained tracker would recognise as scans of the various groups of people he encountered along the way. In Sherlock's mind, his disguise that day was graduate architecture student, so random shots of things that weren't of usual interest to the people caught in those shots would seem in character. But if his stalker was following, Sherlock's camera might force him or her into greater discretion in order to avoid being captured themselves or draw Sherlock's attention. That was, if they were professionals. Amateurs, like Anderson's fellows or other “fans” wouldn't care and the Instagram account would continue to grow.

Sherlock knew there were too many variables in play for his little experiment to test with any rigour; there were only so many factors he could control for. But it was a start, and it was a way to fill the day.

Crossing Paddington Square Gardens Sherlock switched his phone to video mode and did a slow sweep of the surrounding buildings, the first capturing the people, the second focusing on the buildings themselves. If he was being followed by a professional, that would most likely spook them into a bit of discretion. Of course, if his followers were CIA or another well-resources agency (or private contractor) they would just hand him off to another set of eyes.

As Sherlock continued on his way, he noticed he was beginning to have a bit of fun, playing his silly game of “catch the stalker”. There was a bit of a spring in his step as he resumed his journey.

Sherlock had always hated supermarkets. The bright lights, screaming children and shoppers shuffling up and down aisles like discontented ghosts had always disturbed him enormously. Waitrose on a Monday afternoon was what he imagined a half-hearted zombie apocalypse might be like. As he wandered the aisles he kept a look out for anyone who seemed even slightly alert and functional; in this context it was a sure sign they were out of place. As he rounded the end of an aisle he was stopped by a young woman slamming a trolley into him, and as she apologised Sherlock saw over her head a man watching with a very un-English interest. As soon as he saw Sherlock notice him he turned away in a poor exhibition of feigned nonchalance. Sherlock noted his face, clothes, and the contents of his basket and dismissed him as a threat immediately: too young to be an agent of any kind, too flustered to be a private contractor. 

Behind him, Sherlock heard the distinctive faux shutter sound of a phone camera. He turned and saw no one but an elderly man peering at the sell by date on a tub of yoghurt and a hugely pregnant woman straining to reach the top shelf of a cheese display. He walked over, grabbed the cheese and dropped it in her trolley as he marched past, glaring down the aisles in search of his stalker. No one he saw was paying him the least attention. None of them appeared to be anything but ordinary Londoners going about their boring, mundane business. None of them looked familiar or suspicious in any way.

Sherlock stood at the end of the sweets and snacks aisle and realised that the day's fun factor was dissipating rapidly. The best he could say about the situation was that by all appearances his opponent seemed semi-competent. But while there had been a brief hint of the thrill of the chase, there were no real consequences to either of their actions, which limited his pleasure in it. A contest with little or nothing riding on the outcome couldn't be more than a momentary distraction. In the end, the tiny momentary ripple of adrenaline he'd felt on hearing that sound had turned sour in his stomach. Another dead end.

Feeling let down, Sherlock left the shop and made his way back to Baker Street without even bothering to buy the groceries he needed, no more enlightened and somewhat downhearted at what would most likely end up another day wasted.

That evening, Sherlock checked the Instagram account and there it was, the photo of the back of his head, the apologising woman just seen over his left shoulder. Even the staring man by the fish counter was included in the background. The photo seemed out of place among the others; there was no way to even identify that the main subject was Sherlock.

He didn't know whether or not to be surprised. He wondered just how clever these people were. Were they toying with him, thinking he'd assume now that they were just obsessive fans? Or were they truly so, and oblivious to the strategic value of not letting Sherlock know exactly what they were up to? Most of all, Sherlock wondered why he was giving these people any thought at all. Yes, the original photos had been disturbing. And yes, it was obvious that someone was trying to intimidate him. He wondered if they knew—or even cared—what a complete failure their efforts had been.

Sherlock resolved to shelve his concerns about whoever was responsible and focus on what really mattered: Moriarty.

~ + ~

**Tuesday, February 3**

Sherlock met Deborah at Kew Gardens tube station and they walked together in the rain for the few blocks to the National Archives building. It seemed there wasn't a cab to be found in the entirety of Richmond. Since Sherlock never carried an umbrella, he was soaked by the time they arrived; as a result, his mood was a foul as the weather.

There was some administrative faffing, then the former Lady Moran (“Back to Martin, now. Call me Christina, please.”) escorted them through the building. To Sherlock's surprise, the woman was entirely uninterested in him, though she must have known his role in the arrest and incarceration of her ex-husband. She and Deborah chatted like old friends as they made their way through the maze of bland beige corridors full of dull-looking beige people to her unremarkable beige office stuffed with various bits and pieces of equipment, some of which Sherlock didn't even recognise.

The process was quite boring. The software analysis didn't take very long; then Christina spent a few minutes poring over the metadata while making meditative noises in the back of her throat that Sherlock very much wanted to demand she stop, but Deborah silenced him with a gimlet-eyed glare that pinned him to his seat. 

Christina scribbled a few notes on her printout. Deborah looked as though she was desperate for a cigarette and was distracting herself by perusing the spines of some terrifyingly technical looking books on the shelves. Sherlock occupied himself by thumbing through the 2013 Wisden, of all things, that he found on the corner of the desk.

After five minutes or so, Christina leant back in her chair and looked over to Deborah. “That's interesting.” She clicked and dragged and opened the file in another program, which displayed a number of scientific-looking animated graphs and charts alongside the video as the file played. Christina paused the video a few times as she scrutinized two of the charts. She made another meditative noise, which this time Sherlock was willing to concede didn't really bother him all that much, as long as she could find something that proved the video was genuine.

The file was played from beginning to end and then again from end to beginning which, based on the faint noises the woman made, was even more interesting. When she was done, she sat back in her chair and stared at the wall for a minute or so, seemingly oblivious to the presence of Sherlock and Deborah. Then she rolled her chair over to check the other cubicle in the small office. She went out into the corridor and looked in both directions before returning and closing the door. She sat, then pointed at the screen as she looked at Sherlock. “Does your brother know that Moriarty has an identical twin?”

Sherlock sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin.

“Does he always make that noise when people ask him questions?” Christina's enquiry apparently was directed at Deborah, so Sherlock ignored it.

“Sometimes. It's a good question, though.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and dove into his memories of years past, ignoring the conversation going on across him. 

The game. The beginning of it all. Jeff Hope. _...except you’re just a man, and they’re so much more than that._

Two years. Two years and all the pain after. Almost losing John. And he hadn't even managed to eradicate them all. It was like a hydra, and one of the heads had been too well hidden for even him to find. Probably held back in reserve just for this eventuality. So now there was another Moriarty to eradicate and this one likely knew all their secrets, revealed in the battle to destroy the other one. 

Sherlock smiled. He promised himself he'd do everything in his power to ensure he was present when Mycroft found out. The seizure was going to be _gorgeous_.

He was about to get up when he paused. “Wait. You know Mycroft?”

Christina smiled. “Oh, yes. We go way back.” Then she laughed.

~ + ~

Sherlock left the Archives in a daze. He even didn’t mind taking the Tube back to Baker Street. He barely noticed the noise, the discomfort, the pressing humanity around him. 

There was another Moriarty in London. 

John and Mary needed to know. Of course Mycroft already knew; Lestrade had probably gone straight to him after leaving Baker Street on Saturday. So much for the prospect of telling him, and the entertaining meltdown that would have followed.

So the other James Moriarty didn't drown in 1992. Sherlock wondered if he'd faked his own death; it would have been an admirable accomplishment for a fifteen year-old. But then, at thirteen his younger twin had murdered a boy, so it was obvious that both the Moriarty boys had been precocious.

But as the Tube trundled its way into central London, Sherlock felt his initial elation subside. It was replaced by something he didn't recognise for a minute or so. And then he realised: it was _uncertainty_ , an unfamiliar and unwelcome interloper.

Had he believed the Martin woman because she'd told him what he'd wanted to hear? Once he'd accepted the possibility, he remembered that the woman hadn't actually said that the footage was genuine, only implied that was the case. He doubted, and hated the fact that he had to. But after Magnussen and the horrible blindness that had led him into that trap, Sherlock thought it best to stop ignoring doubts when they arose, no matter how inconvenient they might be. 

Was the man in the video really Jim Moriarty's long-lost twin brother? Some other man entirely, surgically altered to look like Moriarty? And most importantly, if there was another Moriarty in London, why had there not been an attack, a demand, some indication of what he wanted? What was he waiting for? Why had he not attempted to take his revenge on Sherlock for his role in the death of his—whatever Jim Moriarty had been to this man? None of it made sense. The complete lack of action over the last month was the best evidence that the man couldn't be a Moriarty. Sherlock wondered if the Martin woman had been correct. Then he began to wonder if she'd just outright lied to him; there was no way either Deborah or he would ever be able to figure out if she had.

But the video was such a deliberate provocation. There was no question in Sherlock's mind that the man had _presented_ himself, made a public declaration of his presence in a manner that he knew would make its way to Sherlock, just as much as the silly video at Christmas had been. But in this circumstance it had been a private message for Sherlock alone.

On his way to transferring trains, he stopped in the middle of the swirling crowds of Earl's Court station and pulled out his phone. No signal. He strode toward the exit, his eyes not leaving the face of his phone. The moment two signal bars appeared he called John. To his surprise, the call went straight to voice mail. He wondered: was John at the clinic? He left a message, then called Mary. There was no answer there, either. He tried the clinic; John wasn't scheduled to be in until later in the day. For a panicked moment Sherlock wondered if this was how it would start, before he realised that there was no way that “Moriarty” would go after his friends without him being there to witness it. Twin or surgically created double, they obviously craved Sherlock's attention and would ensure that he would be there to watch his friends suffer, regardless.

As he slid his phone back into his pocket, it rang. To his relief, it was John.

“John, I—”

“Sorry, not got a lot of time. We're off to the hospital.” The excitement and fear in his voice were palpable.

“Mary?”

“Sorry, got to go. Baby day! We're out of commission for the foreseeable.”

Sherlock grinned and a flash of relief flowed through him. “Do you want me to come?”

“Nah. It'll mostly be lots of waiting around and pacing. Mess. Screaming. Mary swearing at me.”

Sherlock heard Mary's voice in the background. “Mary will be swearing at you right now if you don't get a move on.”

Sherlock smiled again. “Hmm. Not my milieu. Except for the latter, perhaps.”

“Ha ha. No, really. I'll let you know when there's news.”

“Of course. Good luck. Call later if you need anything. And give my best to Mary and little Sherlock.”

He could hear the grin through the line as John signed off. “Yeah, right. Talk to you soon.” Sherlock heard Mary's shouted goodbyes in the background just before the call ended.

As Sherlock walked out of the station, “Moriarty” fell by the wayside as thoughts of John and Mary made their way to the forefront of his mind and the flush of happiness he'd felt before was replaced by a sense of unease.

When Sherlock arrived home, he was still unaccountably restless. He checked his phone for messages every fifteen minutes. _How long did it take to have a baby, anyway?_ The internet was surprisingly useless on that point, though he did manage to lose seven hours once his search had led him to the terrifying vortex of humanity called Mumsnet.

The distraction was welcome, even if the concomitant breastfeeding photographs and entirely unnecessary information about eclampsia, epidurals, flabby kegels and spontaneous urination wasn't.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, February 4**

Sherlock was not surprised when the call came from John to tell him that the baby had been born early that morning.

“Yeah, a girl, just like the scan said it would be.”

After communicating the requisite congratulations, Sherlock racked his brain for what he believed were the expected responses. “How's Mary?”

“Fine. Exhausted. She's coming home tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“She had a baby, not open heart surgery. There weren't any complications, so they're sending her home. Mostly she just needs to rest right now.”

“Oh.” Sherlock was at a loss for what to say next. Congratulations had been given and received, information on the health of mother and child had been exchanged. What was next, he wondered.

There was an uncomfortable pause for a few seconds before John cleared his throat. “So. How've you been?”

“Busy. Working on the cold cases. Some other things.” Though Sherlock had spent most of the previous four days wondering if he should tell John about the CCTV footage, he was still unsure. Indecisiveness was an unfamiliar feeling for him and he was distinctly displeased with both the emotion and its effects. He didn't want John to feel pressured and he knew that talking about anything to do with Moriarty would cause John to do so. And there were Sherlock's still nagging suspicions about the authenticity of the video, despite his initial acceptance of Christina's verdict. The woman's apparent certainty had only muddled Sherlock's thinking on the matter. But sticking to his plan to try to draw John back to the work, Sherlock thought it best to at least pretend to respect his friend's wishes on the matter of anything to do with Moriarty and kept the second video to himself until Lestrade came through with the corroborating CCTV footage. 

“Any clients?” John appeared to know to keep the conversation impersonal. 

“Nope. People are only bringing me boring things right now. But Lestrade's keeping me busy.”

“Good.” Sherlock thought he heard what might be a hint of tension in John's voice, afraid Sherlock was again going to ask him the thing that Sherlock had resolved not to. “Well, I'd better be off then. Still have lots of people to call.”

“Of course.”

“We'll talk in a few days.”

“Yes.”

They rang off and Sherlock stared at the kitchen table as he slowly placed the phone into his dressing gown pocket. He was glad. Worried, yes, but on balance: happy. He'd always been happy about the prospect of the baby, even when it had transformed from an abstraction to an imminent physical reality. He was glad for both John and Mary. He wanted them to be happy. And everything he'd observed from the moment he'd informed them of the pregnancy to today indicated that they (especially John) were thrilled at the prospect of parenthood. He would never wanted to stand in the way of that happiness, no matter what.

~ + ~

**Thursday, February 5**

While Sherlock distracted himself from work by watching Mrs Hudson wash the kitchen lino, he heard his phone ping. It was Mary. 

_Hi there, godfather.  
Mary_

_Is this The Godfather? I'm not sure I appreciate the implications of that reference.  
SH_

_Ha ha-no. Home from hosp. J playing with baby. Bored!  
Mary_

_Shall I come by?  
SH_

_Nah. Wait until she's less of a purple lumpy blob.  
Mary_

_20 years sufficient, you think?  
SH_

_How are you? Other than bored?  
SH_

_Tired. Sore. Endorphin crashed. Can't sleep.  
Mary_

_Sounds horrible. Return it to sender?  
SH_

_J v fond of it. I think he already loves it more than me.  
Mary_

_Name?  
SH_

_Still arguing about that.  
Mary_

_We still agree about not Sherlock.  
Mary_

_Not Sherlock sounds a lovely name.  
SH_

There was a pause for a minute or so and Sherlock imagined Mary passing his new suggestion to John and the two of them indulging in a good laugh.

_Stop it. Laughing hurts.  
Mary_

_I'll pretend to be Mycroft then.  
SH_

_Scary thought.  
Mary_

_You have no idea-well maybe you do.  
SH_

_You're snippy tonight. Cases getting you down?  
Mary_

_Boring. Frustrating distractions. Nothing you need worry about.  
SH_

_You okay?  
Mary_

_Still sober-stop fussing.  
SH_

_In future please direct all mothering instincts towards actual child.  
SH_

_Not what I'm worried about actually.  
Mary_

_Pity you're incapacitated, I'd offer you your husband's old job.  
SH_

_Don't think he'd appreciate that.  
Mary_

_He abandoned it, he doesn't get to complain if I offer it to someone else.  
SH_

_How's Greg?  
Mary_

_For gods sake ask him yourself I refuse to play go-between w you two.  
SH_

_Keep your knickers on there.  
Mary_

_Get Molly to help if you're at loose ends.  
Mary_

_Been there done that-and she isn't interested.  
SH_

_Give it a few weeks, he'll come round in the end.  
Mary_

_I am capable of solving a case on my own you know.  
SH_

_I know but everything's more fun with friends.  
Mary_

_Yes well your fun with friends resulted in a baby-no thank you.  
SH_

_I seem to have stumbled into an outbreak of intra-family violence.  
SH_

_I wonder what Lestrade means by giving me these cases.  
SH_

_Maybe giving me suggestions how to get rid of Mycroft?  
SH_

_J unlikely to be impressed by same.  
SH_

_Speaking of intrafamily violence, have you ever met Harry?  
Mary_

_No, have you? Am fascinated by prospect.  
SH_

_Me too! You're only his best friend but I'm his wife and she still can't be bothered.  
Mary_

_But I'm his famous best friend, everyone wants to meet me, so even stranger.  
SH_

_She probably still has PTSD from own failed marriage. Unpleasant associations.  
SH_

_I'll mention that to J next time he brings it up.  
Mary_

_He's worried about drunk sister?  
SH_

_He called yesterday about the baby – did not go well.  
Mary_

_Starting to wonder if she's just a figment of his imagination.  
Mary_

_If so would be named Harvey not Harry.  
SH_

_I can't believe you know that but not who Madonna is.  
Mary_

_Gotta go, mummy duties call!  
Mary_

_Thank you for leaving out all pertinent and potentially scarring details.  
SH_

_Cheers! Talk soon.  
Mary_

_Bye.  
SH_

~ + ~

**Friday, February 6**

While Sherlock was eating breakfast the next morning a text from Mary arrived:

_Grace Mary Morstan Watson. Not Sherlock a distant second. Come by tomorrow?  
Mary_

Sherlock replied in the affirmative, a smile on his face, and turned his attention back to his tea and newspaper.

~ + ~

“You look happy.”

“I am, Doctor. It has been a good week.”

“Well, the case has finally—”

“Yes, yes.” He flapped a hand dismissively. “John and Mary's baby was born Wednesday morning.”

“That is good news. Babies are such hopeful things.”

“Yes, indeed.”

They were both smiling and Sherlock felt strangely at peace for the moment, though he knew it wouldn't last.

“So, boy or girl?”

“Girl. Grace Mary Morstan Watson. They were strangely resistant to the suggestion of naming her Sherlock. Or Not Sherlock.”

“Can't imagine why. Have you given any thought to the recent developments? The non-baby ones.”

“Have you ever been on the website Mumsnet?”

Deborah made a choking sound. “Christ, no. Why would I?”

“I never realised how competitive parenting is these days. Not that I can imagine John and Mary getting caught up—”

“Sherlock, can we stick to the matter at hand? I distinctly remember some significant whingeing when there was nothing going on. Now is not the time to be side-tracked into Babyland.”

“I'm not allowed to be happy for my friends?”

She rolled her eyes. “It's their baby, and you have more important work to do than getting all—”

“All what?”

She gave him a pensive look. “You've been given the opportunity to prove it's in MI5's interests to keep you alive and working. Don't waste it. I don't think this has bought you a lot of time.”

“I have no intention of wasting a moment's thought on the thing until we can prove it's genuine.”

“Christina—”

“Did not say it was genuine.”

“She implied—”

“Doctor—”

“Well, if it's a fake, that's worth thinking about, isn't it?”

“Not really. MI5 would have faked it to try and incite public panic and to distract me from finding out who might have created the first video. The police are always making things up to try and get more power. Mycroft's 'friend' is probably in on the scheme.”

“Oh, lord. Christina is not a friend of your brother's, that I can attest.” She held up a hand to cut off his protests. “You need to stop getting distracted by irrelevancies.”

“Collecting data is never a waste of time. And it's too much of a coincidence; the universe is never lazy enough for coincidences like this. Moran's wife is your contact? And she knows Mycroft. What are you not telling me, Doctor?”

Deborah stared at him while she appeared to give the matter some thought. She sighed and Sherlock was glad she'd capitulated quickly; he was getting bored of the conversation already. 

“Sebastian Moran is related to my wife. I know Christina through family, just like I told you last week. From what little she's said over the years, she knew your brother when they were at Oxford. Reading between the lines, there's no love lost between them. And no, before you ask, there has never been any evidence she was involved in any of Moran's little extracurricular treasons and trust me, people have looked. More than once, I imagine. They've been separated for more than ten years. I'd be surprised if she's even laid eyes on the man in five, and even then only to argue about their children. So there, the entire extent of your little conspiracy.”

“She's married to—”

“Divorced from.”

“Divorced from the most important traitor since Blunt and MI6 lets her traipse her way through their databases. That is very strange.”

“Can we please stop talking about Christina Martin? My god, you're like a dog with a bone. She has nothing to do with this case.”

“The Doctor doth protest too much.”

“Oh for—”

“So why does she hate Mycroft? Not that she really needs a reason. I mean, he's Mycroft. Who wouldn't hate him?''

“I don't.”

“No, of course you don't. You think he's 'fascinating'.” Sherlock couldn't help adding a bit of melodrama to his slight shudder.

“No, I think he's odd. And perhaps a little interesting,” she conceded with a shrug. 

“Mycroft tried to recruit her,” Sherlock crowed. “That's why she hates him. He tried to recruit her and she ran for the hills, which of course would have earned his eternal enmity. There's nothing Mycroft hates more than being denied something he wants.”

Deborah gave him a flat stare in response, then sighed theatrically. “Okay, back to planet Earth. Why do you really not have anything on the Moriarty situation? Have you really spent the last three days on Mumsnet?”

“As I said, I have no interest is being led on a wild goose chase.”

“Oh, pull the other one. I saw the look on your face at the Archives. It was like fifteen Christmases happened all at once. You were like a puppy with two tails.”

“Trust me, Doctor. Fifteen Christmases at once would result in nothing but a psychotic breakdown.”

“Oh, right, of course. I forgot, another Christmas hater. Still. Puppy. Two tails.”

Sherlock sighed. “If it'll shut you up.” He paused for dramatic effect and was not surprised to see the Doctor roll her eyes at him, as if joining into the spirit of the thing. “There really are only two possibilities: the video is real, or it's fake. The latter case is easier to address. Who is interested in people thinking Moriarty is back? The security services. He's their bogey-man. Another supposed threat by another supposed Moriarty means more power for them. Our stupendously incompetent government is probably behind the whole thing. An election is coming and they're behind in the polls. They need the populace to feel under threat. And a fake Moriarty is even better than a real one, because it sets me up to fail, because I can't catch a man who doesn't exist. Meaning this Blythe fellow can use my failure to take down Mycroft. Which is supposedly what interests him for some unknown reason other than the obvious appeal of seeing Mycroft fall on his face for once.” 

“Good point,” Deborah mused. “The government is planning to bring in new counter-terrorism legislation this spring. The Lib Dems will complain but not do much other than drag their feet until the election. Another public panic caused by another supposed appearance by Moriarty would probably give the government the ability to push it through anyway. Your friend the Home Secretary is looking more and more like our culprit.”

“Perhaps. On the other hand, the possibility of the CCTV footage being real depends on a small number of possibilities. As your _chum_ indicated, there might just be another Moriarty abroad that we didn't know about before. Perhaps he's come to wreak his vengeance on the people he considers responsible for his brother's death. Who knows? Or it's some underling or associate surgically altered to be his double. Useful things, doubles. Very popular amongst the upper echelon of the criminal classes in the 1970s. Or perhaps Mycroft created a clone in the bowels of Baskerville from tissue taken from Moriarty after he killed himself on the roof of Bart's. Maybe there's a whole vault of frozen Jim Moriartys waiting to be thawed out as required.”

“Sounds like an episode of Doctor Who.”

“You watch crap telly, too?”

“As much as I can get past Maris, which isn't much. So. What scenario do you think is our best bet?”

“Best bet? You want me to come up with a 'best bet'? Is that the standard that MI5 has descended to, best bets?”

“Sherlock—”

“I'm a detective, not a fortuneteller. I need data.”

“Well, we don't have any. How about supposition? Logic? You are capable of logic, are you not?”

Sherlock pulled a face. “Guessing,” he muttered.

“Which do you think is most likely, based on available data?”

“Probabilities mean nothing in a sample size of one. Didn't you have to study statistics in medical school?”

She stared at him across her desk for a minute. Her eyes could be remarkably penetrating when she wanted them to be, he realised as he capitulated. “Oh, all right. The timing is too perfect for it to be genuine. Same as the first video; it appeared two minutes after—” Sherlock wondered if Doctor Deborah knew about his aborted Eastern adventure.

She appeared to not notice or ignore his slip. “That doesn't speak to whether or not it's genuine, but to whether or not whoever broadcast it knew about the timing of your little mission.” 

She gave him a knowing look and Sherlock relaxed. “No, you're right. Whoever they are, they had access to intelligence known only to a handful of people. Which again points to MI5.”

“Do you think your brother might be involved?”

“With this video?”

“No, the first one.”

“I did wonder. On the way back from the airfield I had myself half convinced that he'd done it. But no, I don't think so. Even if he is enough of a drama queen.” Sherlock paused. “Who exactly knew about my mission?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“Oh, no, no, no. You do not get to back out now. You said you want me to come out of this alive. Well now it's time to put out or we're done here, Doctor.”

“Put out?” She snickered at him.

“Poor choice of words. My apologies.” She was still smiling at him. “You have the most revolting imagination.” 

She laughed. “Oh dear. You really are a piece of work, aren't you?”

“Who knew about my mission, Doctor?”

“Still can't tell you.”

“You're being remarkably unhelpful.”

“I'm no help to you dead.”

“Speaking of drama queens,” he muttered. 

“I heard that.” She sighed. “You can probably figure out most of them from the data you already have. Work from there.”

“Data, Doctor. Not 'supposition'.”

“Well, supposition is all I have to offer right now.”

“Well, then, you get in exchange exactly what that's worth: nothing.”

“Don't let the door hit you in the arse on your way out.”

“Very funny.”

“I wasn't trying to be.”

“Well. We seem to have come to an impasse, Doctor.”

She shrugged. “You seem to have forgotten what this charade is really about.”

He stood and pulled on his coat. “No, that's becoming clearer all the time.”

~ + ~ 

As Sherlock stood on the platform of Oxford station he sent Lestrade a text: _Where's my CCTV footage? SH_

He still hadn't received a response by the time he'd arrived home.

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wondering what Mycroft and his gang were up to this week? Find out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/16331771).


	6. The bastard child of Mycroft and Howard Shilcott

**Saturday, February 7**

Sherlock had to knock three times before a distracted-looking Mary opened the door. She was putting on her coat and she waved him in with an exhausted, “I'm off to the shop while I can. Won't be long,” and closed the door behind her.

John was sitting on the sofa, cradling an impossibly small-looking bundle to his shoulder, rubbing slow circles. “Hi,” he whispered as Sherlock stood, transfixed, in the middle of the room. There was a small hiccoughing sound and John grimaced, then pulled the bundle away and wiped his shoulder with a towel. John beckoned Sherlock over, but his feet didn't seem to be at home to his brain at that moment so he just continued to watch.

“It's all right. She's falling asleep.”

“Okay.” Sherlock still didn't move.

“She won't bite, you know. No teeth for months yet.” John glanced down at the bundle on his lap and the look on his face began to set off every alarm in Sherlock's mind. “You can't really see her from over there.”

“No, it's fine. Better I stay— Here. Germs. Probably.”

John gave him a tired but indulgent smile, then turned his attention back to his daughter, whose face Sherlock could just see past the folded edge of the blanket. Sherlock felt as if his knees were about to buckle, and dropped into a nearby chair, surprised he managed to do so without falling on his face. John looked between the baby and Sherlock. “Gracie, that's your Uncle Sherlock. He's an idiot. And no running off on adventures with him until you're at least sixteen.”

“Grace.” Sherlock rolled the name around in his head for a second or two. “I approve.”

“Glad to hear it.” John was smiling the smile that Sherlock didn't recognise but which made him tremendously uncomfortable. It made him want to leave, as if he were intruding. 

“So. John. How is— Fatherhood.”

John must have caught something in his tone as the look he gave Sherlock was penetrating and the smile had been replaced by the beginnings of a frown. “Exhausting.” Then the smile returned. “Bloody fantastic. Terrifying. Right now mostly exhausting.”

“Just wait until she's fourteen and the boys start chasing her. That's when things get truly terrifying. Or so I've heard.”

“Uh huh.”

“Does she— Sleep?” Sherlock began to wonder about his own sanity. Or at least his deteriorating ability to speak in complete sentences. Why was he making smalltalk? He hated smalltalk. And he'd never before had difficulty talking to John. Why was he so tongue-tied? Nothing he'd read on Mumsnet had indicated that newborns had this side-affect. Perhaps this was one of those things that ordinary people just knew already, like the minutiae of the offside rule and the names of pop singers. 

After almost two minutes of uncomfortable silence, in which Sherlock watched John stare at his daughter with an increasingly gormless expression on his face, John looked over at him. “Do you want to hold her?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he looked as though he wanted to recall them.

Sherlock was torn. He had no particular interest in children, but he'd never held one before and taking advantage of an opportunity to acquire new data was generally a good idea. And the sooner he became familiar with the competition for John's attention the better. But the idea of holding the tiny thing repelled him and he wasn't sure he could trust himself with it. “Perhaps not. Germs.”

“Right. Germs.” John smiled at him in a way that relieved some of the tension Sherlock hadn't realised he was carrying in his chest. After he'd placed the sleeping baby in the bassinet on the floor, John stood and stretched. “God.”

Sherlock followed him as he shuffled into the kitchen and watched as he filled the kettle. While the tea steeped they sat at the small table. Sherlock could tell he had only half of John's attention, if that. He was obviously listening for any sound from the other room. John must have noticed Sherlock's pique. “She's only sleeping about half an hour at a time.”

“Oh.” Sherlock had no idea how to respond to any of it. He supposed he should at least pretend to be interested. “When are you going back to the clinic?” _When are you going to be working cases with me again?_

“Next week.”

“Good. You'll want to get away from all this, I imagine.” Sherlock knew immediately that he didn't need to bother asking 'not good?'. “I'm going to start taking private clients again soon.” John's expression didn't change. “Nothing too dangerous, I'm sure.” Still no change.

“So. You're busy, then.” John scowl was broken by a yawn. “Sorry.”

There was a tiny _mmph_ sound from the other room and John was out of his chair as if shot from a cannon. He was on his hands and knees peering into the bassinet before Sherlock had even managed to turn in his chair. He wondered if the John he was seeing was a reflection of the man in doctor mode: fussing, hyper-vigilant. As Sherlock watched from the kitchen, the door opened and Mary appeared, hands full of carrier bags. He got up to help her, took the bags from one hand and carried them to the kitchen counter.

“That was quick,” John said as he lifted the now vaguely-squirming baby.

“I got lucky with the parking. Did she sleep at all?”

“About ten minutes.”

Mary sat on the sofa with a groan and held out her hands for the baby. As she took her, Mary looked over to Sherlock. “She's going to want to nurse again fairly soon. I'd understand if you want to leave.”

A part of Sherlock's brain froze, then stuttered, then just packed it in entirely. “Um. Yes. Perhaps that might be for the best.”

“No, you just got here,” John protested. “You don't have to—”

“No, you're both tired. You don't need me under foot.” Sherlock was winding his scarf around his neck before he even noticed. John gave Mary an exasperated look before turning back to Sherlock. “You don't have to go.”

“I know I don't, but I should.”

“You haven't even looked at her.”

“She's a baby, John. They all look exactly the same to everyone who isn't their parents.”

Mary laughed and Sherlock gave her a brief smile as he pulled on his coat. He turned to John as he opened the door. “We'll do something next week. Maybe chase down some jewel thieves.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” John looked to Mary, who shrugged.

With a wave, Sherlock was out the door and on his way back to Baker Street.

As he walked to the train station, Sherlock lined up the new data he'd acquired in an orderly list. John was happy. John was desperately in love with his daughter. John was borderline obsessed. John was oblivious to everyone and everything else. 

John wasn't going to do anything he perceived to be any kind of risk to his family. Not now. Not yet. Perhaps not ever again.

Sherlock calmed himself with the knowledge that it wouldn't be enough for John. That the baby would turn out to be like the marriage. After a month of playing happy marrieds in the suburbs, John had needed to get back in the game. And Sherlock knew that John would tire just as quickly of a life defined by playing besotted father, as well.

Patience had never been high on Sherlock's list of priorities or a virtue he'd much subscribed to in his life, but he knew it would be what brought John back. So he sat back and resolved to wait him out. To give him what he claimed he wanted, and let boredom and John's nature do the rest.

~ + ~

**Sunday, February 8 and Monday, February 9**

_Where is my CCTV footage?  
SH_

_Not now, Sherlock. I'll call tomorrow.  
DCI Greg Lestrade_

“What in heaven's name are you doing?”

Sherlock turned to see Mrs Hudson in the doorway, looking around at the piles of paper everywhere. “Reviewing old cases.”

“Old cases, cold cases. It seems like nothing else but cases going on,” she burbled as she wove her way through the piles and headed off to the kitchen. “I got you that curry paste you like so much,” she said as she dropped the shopping bags next to his microscope.

“Hm. Yes,” he replied as he re-arranged the piles on the table in front of the sofa.

“Why do you need all this paper?” Her dismay was obvious. “I thought everything was on that internet you're always using.”

“Hardly. And I only have room to save the relevant data.”

“What's all this then?”

“Irrelevant data, obviously.”

“If it's—”

“Mrs Hudson,” he cut her off in a warning tone.

Her exasperated expression was back. “Well, that's me off then. Mrs Turner's having a bridge party; it should be fun. Seems like ages since I've seen her.” She navigated the paper shoals and Sherlock was left with his immediately irrelevant but hopefully useful data.

He hated that it had come to this, trawling through every case he'd investigated during Moriarty's known active period in the probably vain hope of finding a link, a tiny whisper of possibility that a case might be connected to him. Of course, if the CCTV footage was genuine and there was another Moriarty at large, then Sherlock would have to look at the cases since the first one's suicide, as well. Sifting through haystacks of data to find even a hint, a tiny telling detail. Something. Anything. Even a case that might, based on its characteristics, _logically_ seem to be related to Moriarty. He needed somewhere to start from, now that every single avenue he had access to was tapped out.

There had been no response from Irene, and he daren't contact her directly again, not after his audience with Blythe still hanging over him. He couldn't risk drawing the man's attention to her.

With Lestrade being cryptic about getting Sherlock the rest of the Tottenham Court Road footage, he had yet to find any evidence supporting Christina's assertion—or her implication—that the footage was genuine. But until someone came clean to him about the connections between Christina, Moran, Deborah and Mycroft, Sherlock was loathe to take her word about anything.

Wiggins and the rest of the homeless network had repeatedly confirmed over the last few weeks that there was no word on the street about Moriarty returning, and nothing had happened in the city since Christmas that seemed to show his mark. But then, Sherlock realised, he might be looking for entirely the wrong thing. It might be missing it happening all around him. The idea didn't bear thinking about, so he brushed it aside.

As the hours of fruitless searching passed, Sherlock's frustration and despair rose hand-in-hand, egging each other on as he tossed aside one file after another, alternating files with supplemental searches in his mind palace. 

Throughout the day, thoughts of John and Mary periodically intruded on his attention. Unbidden, images of John with his daughter floated on the surface of Sherlock's consciousness as he read through the files that documented their work together. Only when he was in his mind palace was he able to avoid the matter entirely, and only by avoiding the mental rooms where he stored his memories of them.

He spent a few hours revisiting the rooms where he'd stored all his data related to his time away. He touched every artifact, recalled the data associated with each and inspected it, down to the tiniest detail, for anything that might be useful. That might give even the vaguest hint about the existence of a brother, or any other cell of associates he'd missed. He paid particular attention to his data about the Baron, a man of considerable resources and extraordinary guile, and one of Moriarty's longest-standing associates.

By the end of it Sherlock was exhausted, physically and mentally. He forced himself to rest for an hour. His mind felt sluggish, drugged (in a not-fun way), and unresponsive. Eventually he had to concede there was nothing: no hints, no leads, no one undisturbed by Sherlock's two-year rampage through the ranks of the former Moriarty's associates and clients. Sherlock refused to give in to despair, but the frustration he allowed to flourish, so that it could act as a goad to drive him on.

Late on the Sunday night Sherlock turned, in a desperation he acknowledged to himself, to the cases from after he'd returned to London. Virtually all of them were quickly and easily dismissed, but one stood out among them all: the Moran case. The bastard child of Mycroft and Howard Shilcott.

On the surface the case had seemed so simple: a bad pun, a misunderstanding, and a fluke, ending in a showdown with John beneath a canopy of detonation charges under the Palace of Westminster. But the more he thought about it, the more Sherlock realised he had been deceived by the simplicity of it once he'd broken the code. The obviousness of it had blinded him to so many details that he should have noted at the time. How the attack was entirely different from Moran's usual operations. How there'd been no apparent profit in the scheme, contrary to Moran's decade and a half of whoring himself to the highest bidder. How _showy_ it all would have been, in contrast to Moran's usual hidden run-of-the-mill treasons. It all seemed so obvious now. Moran _had_ sold himself, to a new sponsor.

But why? Ordinarily, Moriarty's business model was that he was the contractor, the consulting criminal, not the client. Why would he pay Moran to blow up Parliament? If there was a remaining brother and his character was similar to that of the Moriarty Sherlock had known, then the scheme would have appealed to his innate craving to bring chaos to the world, but it still didn't seem to connect to anything. It was entirely random. Other than chaos, what purpose did it serve?

Sherlock realised he was projecting the characteristics of the Moriarty he'd known onto the shadowy other he was beginning to discover, and it was a dangerous trap to fall into. There was still no confirmation that it was even the brother, though it still seemed the most likely answer. 

He forced his mind to abandon its renewed excitement at that possibility in order to allow it to enumerate the others: a former client who had decided to step into Moriarty's shoes after taking up his methods and style of play; another party entirely unrelated to Moriarty who for some reason wanted to destroy a significant portion of the British Establishment; or his first instinct, a former associate taking up Moriarty's business. Perhaps the man had had a partner, someone who'd known his methods and madnesses intimately and who wanted to continue his work, or to deceive people into believing that the man was somehow still alive. Perhaps it was to sow doubts into the minds of the public about the veracity of the revised ruling in the “Richard Brook” coroner's judgement and the ruling on Moriarty's death on the roof of Bart's.

His logic told him that any of these possibilities were just as likely—probably more so—than a fifteen year old schoolboy successfully faking his own death, assuming a false identity, smuggling himself out of the country and turning into (another) criminal mastermind. It was ludicrous. But then, everything to do with the Moriarty he'd known had been, even his horrible taste in popular music.

The non-logical part of his mind, the part that could sense the flavour of a crime the moment he stepped under the police cordon tape, was shouting at him that he had another Moriarty in his sights. That the older twin would be the same as the younger. That the Moran conspiracy displayed all the hallmarks of the Moriarty Sherlock had known. He knew he was projecting and didn't care. He knew his desire for the CCTV footage to be genuine was selfish and dangerous for everyone he cared for, but he still didn't care. There was something deep in him, in the part of him that everyone not a Holmes thought was _not good_ , that was desperate for it to be true.

But he still doubted. He knew he needed to clutch onto that doubt. It might be the only thing to save him from making another Magnussen-scale mistake.

Sherlock wondered: was he placing too much value on the little data he had because it was the only data available to him? He knew he was right to question his observational biases. For if nothing else, the Magnussen debacle had taught him that he had them. He couldn't afford to lose the ability to trust his judgement, not now.

And right now Moran was the only lead he had to work on. If further investigation revealed no tangible connection to Moriarty, then all he'd lost was time, something that he seemed to have in abundance now, and so was hardly a sacrifice.

As Sherlock allowed his mind to dive into his memories of the case, it replayed for him the security footage first seen in Howard Shilcott's flat. The footage that had really started the case, not Mycroft dragging him out of a Serbian basement and back to London.

When he returned from his mind palace it was almost 4:00 a.m. Sherlock made himself a cup of tea and dug out his paper files on the case and reviewed the bits of data he hadn't bothered to file away on his hard drive. 

As he flipped through the file he began to wonder why he'd heard nothing about a prosecution. Had the Met and MI5 let the man go? Did MI5 still have him in custody, secreted away somewhere under the cloak of security legislation and the Official Secrets Act? Mycroft would know, of course. Lestrade might even know. Of the two, the latter was more likely to be helpful, though much less likely to have any useful information. But Sherlock had to at least try.

He glanced at his phone; it was just coming up to 5:00 a.m., hardly the time to be chasing after Lestrade. So he turned to his computer to see if he could find anything about the possible current whereabouts of Sebastian Moran.

It was soon obvious to Sherlock that MI5 still had the man in its custody. It was as if he'd disappeared off the face of the Earth some time in November 2013. As a leading government peer in the Lord's, his absence from the House the night of the vote on the new security legislation had been noted in the press. In the days that followed his continuing absence had been commented on in the parts of the press that focused on political coverage, but it only received passing mention in the mainstream news. In the second week had come the announcement he was resigning his ministry for health reasons. There had been press releases, but no interviews, then a small flurry of speculation and public head-scratching by senior members of the government for a few days. Then nothing. Events moved on quickly and in the press at least, Sebastian Moran seemed to have been forgotten.

Sherlock wondered if the man was even still alive. Considering the nature of his extra-curricular activities it wasn't beyond imagining that MI5 might have handed the man over to the CIA for “intensive interrogation” on his work for North Korea. But Sherlock's instincts weren't entirely on board with that assessment; he strongly suspected the man was still both alive and in the custody of MI5. And if that were true, it was another hint that there _was_ still someone out there from Moriarty's organisation, and that Moran was connected to it. For why else would MI5 hang onto the man except to extract information about other criminals? Perhaps they were even hiding him under some sort of witness protection scheme.

When he deemed it likely that Lestrade was up and about, he sent the man a text: 

_Need to see you today about an old case.  
SH_

Half an hour later he received a reply.

_What now? Busy all day.  
DCI Greg Lestrade_

_An old case re: M.  
SH _

_OK will be by tonight. Up to my eyeballs in mtgs.  
DCI Greg Lestrade _

_Bring dinner then.  
SH _

_Ha. Good one.  
DCI Greg Lestrade _

By three o'clock, Sherlock was tired of waiting. He'd cleaned up all his old files, to the delight of Mrs Hudson, who seemed thrilled about his apparently turning over a new leaf. He even cleaned up an old experiment from the kitchen table and put some of his equipment away. But by the middle of the afternoon, he was done with make-work and patience, so he did what he knew he shouldn't: he exposed his investigation to his MI5 listeners.

“Lestrade,” the man said as he answered his phone. “I said I was coming by later, Sherlock. What do you want now?”

“Tired of waiting.” Sherlock could tell from the lack of background noise that Lestrade wasn't in his office. “Where are you?”

“At the office. Where else would I be at this time of day?”

“No you're not. Not that it matters.”

“What do you want; I'm in the middle of something here.”

“I need you to bring me the Sebastian Moran file.”

“What?” The man's shock was clear from his almost-yelp down the line. “What do you want that for?”

“I need to know if he was involved with Moriarty in some way. The attack on Parliament was—”

“No way, Sherlock. We don't have anything on that.”

“But you were the Met lead on it.”

“I can't let you see anything we have on Moran; you don't have anywhere near the security clearance, for a start. And it was never a Met case anyway.”

“That's—disappointing.”

“Sorry the world doesn't revolve around you and what you want. Some of us manage to learn that before the age of forty, you know.”

“Thirty-nine. So, you don't have anything?”

There was a pause at the end of the line and Sherlock was suddenly sure he knew where Lestrade was. As he waited for the man to reply, he wondered if he should tell him he knew.

“How's the Robichaud case going? You know, the one you're supposed to be working on.”

“Since when are your cold cases a higher priority than Moriarty?”

Lestrade paused for a few seconds, which confirmed that Sherlock wasn't the only person Lestrade was having a conversation with. “Is there anything else? Or was this the reason you wanted me to come by tonight?”

“You needn't bother if you won't bring it to me. And what about my CCTV footage?”

“Jesus, Sherlock. You really want to be talking about that now?”

“It's been more than a week!”

There was a pause and Sherlock could almost hear Lestrade counting to ten in his head at the other end of the call. “I explained this before.”

“Yes, and your explanation was irrelevant.”

“Okay, then. Have you got anywhere with the Robichaud case, though?”

“Somewhere. I'm not close to a solution yet.”

“Let me know when you have something.”

“And what am I going to get in exchange?”

“Beyond the undying gratitude of the Metropolitan Police Services? How about Chinese?”

“You're going to have to do better than that, Lestrade.”

“Thai? Haven't had Thai for ages.”

Sherlock sniffed. “It's a start.”

~ + ~

**Tuesday, February 10**

Sherlock spent the next day thinking about the Moran case, going over all the details again, annoyed at Lestrade stymying his efforts, again. Sherlock was still sure the man had been with Mycroft when they'd spoken, so it was likely that Lestrade was acting on his brother's orders. Hopefully it was only a temporary setback, a ruse to mislead whoever would have been listening in.

Thinking about Mycroft and Moran caused his memory to go back to the previous Tuesday and for a moment Sherlock wondered if perhaps he was losing his mind. Or suffering from some sort of early-onset dementia. How had he missed it? How had he missed that Doctor Deborah had lead him to the beginning of the path? He finally noticed what had been patiently idling in the back of his mind since Tuesday, waiting to be observed once the hoopla surrounding John and Mary's baby was over. Now he knew why Deborah had insisted on taking him to the Archives. She'd done so to give him a direct line to a prime information source: Moran's ex-wife. And this meant that Deborah either suspected or knew that there _was_ a connection between Moran and Moriarty. So much for her being no help, he mused. For a moment he thought that perhaps he should apologise to her, as well, then dismissed the idea.

For there was no possible other reason why Deborah had had to reach out to the former Lady Moran; MI5 would have forensic resources the woman had never heard of. At the time, Sherlock had wondered why it had been deemed necessary for them to go to the woman for assistance, and now he knew. 

Sherlock was furious with himself. It was inexcusable that he hadn't given proper consideration to why Deborah had taken him to meet the Martin woman. And why hadn't he bothered to pay any attention to her once they were there? She'd been married to a notorious traitor, Sherlock's Rat No. 1, and he hadn't thought it worth deducing a single thing about her. In his current situation he needed to be _more_ vigilant, not _less_. The worst of it, he realised with a grimace, was that he hadn't taken note of her because he'd accepted Doctor Deborah's assertions about her without question. His unforgivable sloppiness rankled, and Sherlock couldn't help but wonder what else he'd been missing about the case that he should have observed. Christina Martin sat at the centre of a network of connections to the Moriarty case and Sherlock had brushed her off like some low-level functionary. He should give the hat back to Lestrade, he mused, if this was the best he could do. 

So he spent an hour or so thinking about Moriarty, Moran, Moran's ex-wife, her connections to Doctor Deborah and Mycroft, and the swirl of superficially disconnected data that had been clouding his mind for a week began to resolve itself into a clear network, lines of contact, relations, flows of influence. Mycroft's lessons of old were right in this case: the universe is too lazy for coincidences, particularly ones as overt as this. 

So Sherlock hit the internet again in a search for further information about Christina Martin, the former Lady Moran. He had, of course, sought out information on her after Deborah had mentioned their meeting, but he hadn't found anything interesting and had abandoned the search too soon. 

An hour later he was underwhelmed and somewhat perplexed. The woman appeared to have no on-line presence not related to her work, other than a few passing references in decade-old society columns. 

She had presented papers at professional conferences, and published in academic journals. What little he found supported his initial impression of a diligent, rather staid, and boring professional woman. But there had to be something else out there, something he hadn't found before, in what he now realised were ridiculously superficial efforts.

But in the end, despite his efforts, the overwhelming impression still was that for someone once married to one of the most infamous men in Britain, she _was_ dull. Which, he thought, in a way explained the “friendship” with Mycroft, a man addicted to the appearance of convention. The only other reference he found to her was that she headed a corporation which, after further digging, was revealed to be a holding company that held full or part ownership in a number of small firms, most of which were located near the family's estate in Buckinghamshire. So on top of her career she ran the family business, working to generate the constant stream of money needed to maintain the family's country pile. Again, unremarkable, and boringly bourgeois.

So Sherlock turned his attention to Moran. Due to the man's political career and social profile, this was more productive. But the one thing he did notice was that on-line references to him after about 2004 never mentioned his wife. So Deborah hadn't been lying: the couple had obviously separated around that time. Moran had dabbled in politics and she'd paid his way. Nice work if you can get it, Sherlock thought.

But he then wondered: if the woman had left before Moran had established any possible links to Moriarty, then why did Deborah want Sherlock to meet her? There had to be something there, something he wasn't seeing, he fumed. And if Deborah had seen MI5's file on Moran, why didn't she just give him the information herself rather than making him chase Moran's ex-wife for it? Or maybe Deborah thought the woman would be useful to him in some other way, unrelated to her ex-husband?

The whole thing was giving him a headache, so Sherlock put it aside and turned his attention back to the dead jeweller and his sneaky daughter-in-law.

~ + ~ 

**Wednesday, February 11**

The next morning, Lestrade dropped by Baker Street while Sherlock was eating breakfast.

“What are you doing here? I didn't call you.”

The man nicked a piece of bacon from Sherlock's plate, narrowly avoiding Sherlock's punitive fork stab. Lestrade gave him a cheeky grin, then ate the bacon in one bite. “Wanted to see if you'd got anywhere with the Robichaud case.”

“No, I was busy yesterday.”

“Looking up information on Moran's ex-wife. Yeah, Mycroft mentioned that this morning,” he continued in response to Sherlock's scowl.

“He sent you to tell me to stop.”

“Among other things.”

“If the two of you aren't going to give me the information I need—.”

“Okay, okay.” Lestrade held up his hands to ward off Sherlock's protests, which he found annoying, as usual. “Okay, deal. You get me the name of who killed James Robichaud and who organised the burglary. And I'll tell you what I know about Moran.”

“Has Mycroft approved this offer? Of course he has. You said you didn't have anything.”

“I said MI5 has the files.” Lestrade tapped the side of his head. “Still got what I remember.”

“Classified information. And based on your age, probably highly corrupted.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“The communication of which would get you fired.”

“Jailed.”

“Oh, _useful_ classified information.” At the man's wry grimace, Sherlock added, “It's always a good idea to make sure beforehand. Most 'classified' information is useless if it's more than a week old.”

“So we have a deal?”

“Yes, yes. Now go away and let me solve your boring little burglary case.” Sherlock raised his newspaper to block the sight of Lestrade's grin as the man ambled out of the room.

Later that morning Sherlock returned to New Bond Street. When he entered the shop, Mrs Robichaud (in another striking, all-red ensemble that caused a headache to flare before he'd even crossed the room) was speaking to a tall, fair-haired man Sherlock recognised as Alan Robichaud, son of the murder victim. As Sherlock crossed the floor they both turned to him, professionally friendly but wary expressions on their faces.

After exchanging greetings and introducing Sherlock to her husband, Mrs Robichaud subtly launched into her sales pitch. “Have you had any further thoughts on what you saw on your previous visit? Or do you have any questions?”

She smiled at him with a hint of simpering Sherlock had learnt to expect from everyone who served the public. As they discussed engraving, Sherlock noticed the groove on the ring finger of her left hand, just above her wedding band. She was wearing the supposedly inferior ruby again, but the width of the band and size of the stone wouldn't have created the slight depression in the flesh of her finger.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock watched Alan Robichaud watch him from the doorway that led to the back office and the stairs to the basement workshop and jewel vault. The man appeared to be trying to make up his mind about something, and was nervous and twitchy. But Sherlock reasoned the man might just be like that all the time, based on what he recalled of the interviews still documented in the pathetic case file.

After about fifteen minutes of pretending a degree of indecision that would try the patience of anyone, Sherlock withdrew again, with a parting request that they hold some pieces for him for a few days. Mrs Robichaud was her usual superficially gracious self, but Sherlock sensed she knew there would be no sale.

Half an hour later he was back home, staring again at the photos and diagrams tacked onto the wall and hoping to gain some sort of perspective on the tiny pieces of data he was slowly accumulating, forcing himself to not pre-emptively shove them into the order he wanted, but allow them to form their own pattern organically. 

In an effort to try to get a better sense of the view angles through the doorway from the shop to the office, he turned to the security footage of the robbery. He followed Christina Martin's example and watched it three times: forward at normal speed, backwards, and then forward again, very slowly. And it was then that he had his breakthrough: at some point in the robbery, one of the robbers appeared to have changed his shoes.

Sherlock sent Lestrade a text: 

_Have your solution. Don't forget what you promised.  
SH_

~ + ~

**Thursday, February 12**

By the time Lestrade arrived that evening, Sherlock was almost beside himself with impatience. He'd accomplished nothing all day, pacing the room and muttering to himself. He missed John's gun; it was definitely a day for shooting a frowny face into the wall to match the smiley that had graced it for the last four years.

“Where have you been? It's almost eight o'clock,” Sherlock demanded the moment Lestrade showed his face in the doorway.

“I do have other— God, why do I bother?” The man dropped onto the sofa without removing his coat beforehand and Sherlock grimaced at the thought of how wet the sofa would be as a result. Lestrade rubbed his hands together.

“Moran.”

“Robichaud,” Lestrade countered.

They glared an impasse across the room at each other.

“Lestrade.”

“Sherlock. We have a deal, don't—”

“My god, you're like a dog with a bone.”

Lestrade opened his mouth to snap back at him, then shut it for a moment. “Robichaud case first. Then I'll give you what I know about Moran.”

Sherlock sighed and hauled himself out of his chair, then paced across the room to stand in front of the sofa. He pointed at the various photos, drawings and notes as he spoke. “James Robichaud. Jeweller in New Bond Street, murdered in his shop by a gang of four men who'd broken in to rob him. His son, Alan, and Alan's girlfriend, Margery Poole, who worked in the shop, had been bound and gagged in the back office by the robbers. Robichaud had followed his usual schedule and gone out to do the night deposit. Ordinarily he would have stopped for a quick dinner before returning to the shop to close up. He was the only person who knew the combination to the jewel safe in the basement, so he had to return to put the stock away for the night. 

“He returned almost an hour earlier than usual that night for some reason and, in the opinion of the infamous DI Thompkins, interrupted the robbery in progress and was killed as a result.” Sherlock paused, and Lestrade gave him a “well, get on with it” look. “So far, so straightforward, superficially cut and dried.”

“Yeah, so, obviously not cut and dried.”

“Of course not. The appalling investigative work done by Thompkins and his band of oafs—”

“Thanks a lot.”

“His band of oafs, excepting one earnest if somewhat misguided Detective Sergeant, gathered virtually no useable, much less useful, data. This was left to Thompkins' moderately more competent, if at least not corrupt, successor.” Sherlock paused as Lestrade choked off a laugh. “But again, the identities of the culprits eluded him.”

“Just spit it out, Sherlock. You turning into Hercule Poirot or something?”

“Very funny. The moustache is a non-starter, if nothing else. So. One of the few reasonably useful and apparently untainted—”

“And not stolen.”

“And not stolen pieces of evidence is the security footage from the shop. On first viewing, _inattentive_ viewing, it appears to confirm the stories of Alan Robichaud and Margery Poole: the culprits broke into the shop by the alley entrance, overpowered them, tied them up and dumped them in the office. There is no security footage of the office space. The rear entrance security footage was not deemed worth keeping by Thompkins, so we only have the footage from the shop itself, and as a consequence we have no confirmation of where Robichaud junior and Poole were once the gang dragged them out of the shop proper.”

Sherlock stopped and gave Lestrade an expectant look. Lestrade shrugged. Sherlock gave a sigh that spoke of many years' disappointments and continued. “A cursory examination of the list of items stolen revealed a significant pattern. Loathe as I am to admit it, Lestrade, you were correct about one thing.”

“Cheers, thanks for—”

“It was a targeted robbery,” Sherlock ploughed over him and Lestrade leant back into the sofa like a man resolved to a long ordeal. “But you assumed it was a stranger who was the client of the robbers. It was, in fact, Alan Robichaud.”

“Really?”

Sherlock paced across the room, grabbed one of the case folders and spun to face the desk by the window. He removed the DVD with the copy of the security footage and popped it into the drive of his laptop. Once the footage was up and running, he fast-forwarded it through to near the end. “Look, here.” He pointed at one of the robbers, then forwarded the footage some more. “And here. What do you see?”

“I see four men robbing a jewellery shop.”

“Lestrade.” Sherlock let a hint of warning slip into his tone.

“Well, you asked.”

Sherlock paused the play and pointed at one of the men on the screen. “Do robbers usually change their shoes in the middle of a job?”

Lestrade peered at the screen. “What?”

With a rising sense of frustration at the man's obtuseness, Sherlock reversed the play for a few seconds. “Here. This fellow in the leather jacket. Look at his shoes. Trainers, probably dark blue or grey but difficult to be sure in this light. And here. Same man, you can tell by the hands and the watch and the way he carries his left shoulder a little lower than his right, probably an old injury.”

“Whatever you say.”

Sherlock gave him an exasperated look, then noticed the beginnings of a smirk on the man's face and almost forgave him. “Now look. Boots.”

“Huh.” Lestrade looked up to Sherlock's triumphant expression. “And this means?”

“The security footage is faked. Most of it. The part of the tape covering the main part of the robbery.” He rewound the footage back a minute or so. “See here, no one is in the shop for just over two seconds. And the very slight change in lighting all of a sudden. This is where they swapped over the footage.”

“What?”

“Do you know that when you say that, you always have the most clueless expression on your face. It's really most disheartening.”

“Shoes. You expect me to believe all that based on a bloke changing his trainers to boots. Maybe there was a fifth guy we don't see until the end.”

“It's the same man. Besides, I have other proof. Seeing the shoes caused me to take a closer look at the entire video. For example.” Sherlock reversed the file to near the beginning. “See this red here?” He pointed at the front of one of the shop display cases. “Red lights. Coming in the front window of the shop through a gap in the security blinds, reflecting off the glass of the case. Note the flash sequence.”

Lestrade peered at the screen again. “Fire engine.” 

“Now here.” Sherlock forwarded again. “Less than one minute later, according to the time stamp.”

“It's gone.”

“And here at the end.” Sherlock was beginning to get excited and Lestrade give him an indulgent look that caused Sherlock to scowl back. “It's back again. Two fire calls in less than forty minutes? In a neighbourhood that quiet?”

“That's—”

“They cut in fake security footage for the duration of the robbery.”

“Why?”

“To hide the fact that Robichaud and Poole were in on it.”

“Why would they need to?” Lestrade paused for a few seconds and Sherlock restrained himself, letting the man attempt to get there on his own. “I mean, assuming you're right. They could just pretend and let the regular recording run through the entire thing.”

“Too much risk of them getting it wrong, or someone noticing they're faking, or something happening that would draw the suspicion of someone watching the video. They grossly overestimated the competence of the police, obviously.”

Lestrade gave him a look, but refrained from answering the barb. “What actual evidence do you have they were involved. Other than flashing lights and shoes?”

“They _have_ to be involved. Why else would they have gone to all this trouble?”

“That's not evidence, Sherlock, and you know it.”

Sherlock could tell that Lestrade was trying to hide his disappointment, but wasn't very successful. “They had to be. Who else could have swapped in the faked footage?”

“The robbers could have. No, that doesn't work. They'd have to film it in the shop beforehand.”

“Yes.” Sherlock crossed his arms and glared at the man. He'd known Lestrade would get there eventually, though it seemed as though he were refusing to believe Sherlock solely in order to be stubborn.

“Right. So, an inside job.”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Alan Robichaud had debts he was hiding from his girlfriend and his father.”

“Yeah, I know. _I_ found that out, remember?”

“His father was refusing to let him into the business, probably because he'd already proved himself incompetent and unreliable with money. And he wanted to give his girlfriend a red diamond for an engagement ring.”

“Really? You think anyone's going to believe he had his dad murdered for a ring?”

“I doubt that had been his intention. I think James Robichaud's murder _was_ just because he stumbled on the robbery. But what the faked footage hid was that Alan Robichaud was actively involved. James probably came in and saw his son standing in the middle of the shop while it was being robbed. They were dubbing over the security footage with the fake footage they'd pre-recorded.”

“The Bowman brothers.”

Sherlock felt a tiny _frisson_ of pride that Lestrade had got there in the end. “Yes. Old friends of Alan Robichaud, known robbers, though this was far beyond their usual ambitions. No one would suspect them unless the son was known to be involved.”

“I did.”

“First of all, they didn't have the connections to be able to get rid of this kind of merchandise.”

“Meaning they were stealing it for someone who could.”

“Yes. It was all set up beforehand and James Robichaud had to die because he saw his son robbing his shop.”

“You know, I did identify them as suspects. In 2002.”

“Yes, but you couldn't prove anything.”

“You haven't proved anything, either.”

“I deduced it, Lestrade. Finding the evidence is your part of the job.”

The man gave him a flat stare for two seconds before sighing. “Right. Nick Bowman is dead and Nigel probably won't remember.” Lestrade dropped into John's chair. “It's tenuous, Sherlock.”

“You could always pretend to be Thompkins and beat the confession out of Robichaud. I saw him, he didn't look very tough. The wife's another matter, though.”

“Ha ha.” Lestrade had a distant look in his eyes as he stared across the room. “All that for a ring. Why didn't he just buy it, or ask his old man for it? And why did it have to be that one?”

“Margery Robichaud is obsessed with red. It's the only colour she wears, top to bottom. Even her jewels. And two red diamond rings were stolen, one of them worth almost £20,000. She lied to me, though. She said her engagement ring was pink but no one who'd met her would ever believe she'd accept a pink diamond.”

“That's. Well, that's—”

“You were right. Partly. As was Thompkins, in fact.”

“Yeah, thanks. I did manage to figure that out myself. I can't get a warrant out of this.”

“But you can justify re-interviewing him. As a suspect. So you can isolate him from the wife. He'll be the one to crack.”

“Okay, thanks for the hints on interrogation strategy. Sally'll be thrilled to get your notes, I'm sure.”

“So you can close it.”

“I haven't made an arrest. It's a long way from closed.”

Sherlock shrugged. “It's closed as far as I'm concerned. I solved it; I gave you your murderer.”

“Whatever. Again, I have no actual case, so no, you haven't solved it. And Nick Bowman's dead.”

Sherlock threw his hands in the air and stomped off towards the kitchen. “That's no fault of mine. Stop trying to weasel out of paying.” He turned back to face a sceptical-looking Lestrade. “My fee was agreed beforehand, if you recall.”

“What you've given me is an excuse to re-investigate a case that's been done twice before. The deal was for a solution.”

“Which is exactly what I've given you. I don't have the authority to question anyone, in case you've forgotten. Do you really want the Chief Superintendent crawling down your neck again because you're letting me investigate your cases for you?”

Lestrade's only answer was a rare, momentary flash of anger expressed as a mulish downturn of his mouth.

“So. Moran.” Sherlock sat back in his chair and laced his fingers together across his chest.

“Okay.” Lestrade shifted in his seat and Sherlock was amused at his discomfort at having to pay the price he himself had proposed. “You know this can't get out.”

“Yes, yes. Stop worrying.”

“No, listen to me. This _cannot_ get out. Even a hint I talked to anyone about this, losing my job and pension is just the beginning. I know you don't care about that. Okay. Great. Flap your hands at me all you like but if you want this you have to promise. You tell no one. Not just that I told you but that you even know it. No hints, no nothing. Not to anyone.”

The man was being boring, but needs must. “Yes, of course.”

“Swear on John's life.”

“What?”

“Swear on John's life that nothing you say or do _ever_ even implies that you know what I'm going to tell you.”

“How the hell does that help me? I have to work this case, Lestrade. And if I have to follow up—”

“That isn't negotiable.”

Sherlock could tell the man was serious, though he had no idea why. He had his disappointed expression on, the one he reserved for when Sherlock had somehow crossed some undefined line. “You're being obstreperously cautious.”

“Generally a good idea when handling radioactive materials.”

“Very funny.”

“Really not.”

Sherlock sighed. He was getting tired of sighing whenever talking to Lestrade; he much preferred the man's former rueful acquiescence to the new Chief Inspector-model Lestrade. On the other hand, he had to grudgingly admire the man's new-found negotiating skills. Invoking John was an interesting touch; it added a dramatic flair he'd never associated with Lestrade before. “I see Mycroft is having his usual malign influence on everything he touches.”

“This has nothing to do with your brother.” The two of them watched each other across the room and Sherlock wondered if they were ever going to get to the point of their meeting. He was about to tell the man to just get on with it already when Lestrade continued. “Are you going to swear or am I leaving? I've got things I'd rather be doing right now than play stupid games with you.”

“Oh for— If it makes you feel better, then yes, I swear on John Hamish Watson's life to neither tell nor imply by either thought or deed that I know any of the things you keep promising to tell me about Sebastian Moran but which I'm starting to suspect you—”

“Shut up, Sherlock.” Lestrade appeared mollified by Sherlock's promises and to Sherlock's relief finally launched into his tale. “You have to remember, MI5 and MI6 were in the driver's seat from the very beginning on this.” Sherlock nodded. “And I don't know if you know, but they really don't get on, 5 and 6. So, 5 was behind the arrest of Moran at the hotel he was hiding out at the night the attack was supposed to happen. 6 wasn't happy about being on the sidelines because they thought Moran was their guy for some reason.”

“He'd been spying for the North Koreans since 1996.”

“Really? That explains a lot. Anyway, we were responsible for the bomb disposal mostly, and liaison with TfL and some of the on-the-ground work, securing the site, dealing with the press. You know. We were never part of the arrest; from what I heard, no one from the Met even saw Moran during or after they picked him up.”

“But you know what happened?”

“Unofficially, yeah. We were never briefed, though. Not properly. We were just there to shut up and do the dangerous stuff as far as the SIS was concerned.”

“Typical. But you weren't de-briefed afterwards?”

“The closest thing was a pair of wankers from MI5 coming by two days later and taking everything we had: incident reports, all the forensics, everything. We don't even have a file on the bomb disposal anymore. It's like it never happened.”

“Did they ever talk to Howard Shilcott?”

“That the bloke who showed you the Tube security footage?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever ask him why he never came to us with that?”

“Why would I?”

Lestrade returned to his more usual bemused expression. “Right. As far as I know you're the only person to talk to him, but it's not like MI5 needed our permission, so maybe they did. They must have known about him. But they probably just got a copy of the footage from TfL.”

“Why has Moran never been charged?”

Lestrade smirked. “How do you know he hasn't?”

Sherlock gave him a look that he hoped communicated what he thought of _that_ comment. “The man is a peer of the realm and at the time was a government minister. If there had been any sort of charge against him entered into any court in this country, it would have been all over the press. A terrorism charge against a serving government minister would have led the news every day for weeks.”

“Yeah, of course. If the charges had been made public.”

“Lestrade, a senior Met officer unfamiliar with fundamental constitutional rights in regards to policing and the courts is a truly frightening prospect.”

Lestrade gave him one of his more sarcastic grins. “Yeah, as if MI5 are known for playing by the rules. In my experience, the government does what it wants regarding the law, especially this government. They'd have just found a way to keep it out of the press if they'd wanted to. Considering how cosy the press is with this lot, you never know what they'd agree to in order to keep shut about it. But you're right; it is more likely they just haven't charged him.”

“So they've been holding him without charge, illegally, for _fifteen months_?”

Lestrade shrugged. “Terrorism charges tend to make the rules go out the window. And you know the government is going to do whatever it takes to make sure the public never find out one of their own is a terrorist, especially with the election coming up. They haven't even put him under a TPIM notice. There's nothing on the books anywhere I know of about any of this. Not even a charge sheet. Like I said: political cases,” the man said as if it were an epithet and Sherlock smiled. 

“Well, at least we know he was alive recently.”

“How's that?”

“He signed his divorce papers last month.”

“How do you know that?”

“Mycroft didn't tell you? I've met Moran's ex-wife.”

The man didn't respond, so Sherlock knew that Mycroft _had_ told him. Lestrade knew he couldn't lie effectively to Sherlock and so ordinarily didn't bother trying. With him, silence was as telling as speech sometimes. “You aren't thinking of going after her, are you?”

“Everything I've been able to find out about her indicates they separated before Moriarty could have arrived on the scene. But if I don't get the information I need elsewhere I may have no choice.”

“Well—”

“Regardless of what Mycroft ordered you to tell me.”

“Mycroft doesn't order me to do anything.”

“What did he tell you, by the way? About her.”

“Not a lot. But I'll tell you one thing: the more I hear about these cases, the more glad I am to be an orphan.”

Sherlock paused, then decided he was going to allow the man his diversion, then laughed at the statement itself. “If it were up to me I'd be the same. The cases you've given me so far have hardly been an advertisement for familial felicity.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Sorry about that.”

“No need to apologise; if you'd known the results you wouldn't have needed to give them to me in the first place. Perhaps the dog war case will turn out to have been a conspiracy between the daughter of one victim and the wife of the other.”

“And the missing girl from Leeds was murdered by a secret half-sister with a grudge.”

“You should write novels, with an imagination like yours, Lestrade.”

“Maybe. Probably make more money than being a copper.”

“Still paying maintenance? I thought she'd re-married.”

“Out of bounds, Holmes,” Lestrade growled in his rarely heard “Treading on thin ice,” voice that Sherlock usually heeded. 

He decided that a show of contrition would be in his interest and so mumbled an apology that was accepted with reasonable good grace.

“But now you mention it, there are some weird parallels between the Klein and Robichaud cases,” Lestrade mused, restarting the conversation after a tense pause.

“Family. Horrible invention. Should be banned outright.”

Lestrade chuckled. “That's the end of the human race, then. But yeah. Toxic families.”

“Toxic expectations.”

“Uh huh.”

Sherlock could tell that the man wanted to say more but was giving Sherlock the floor because he thought Sherlock might stray into some sort of personal revelation. “Rose Klein expected her son to grow up to be the perfect son, to reflect her supposed glories as the perfect wife and mother she presented herself as being. Her definition of the perfect son, of course, which does not appear to have been accommodating to the fact that her son was homosexual. Alan Robichaud expected his father to give him what he wanted without earning it, simply because he was his father's son. Margery Pool thought she had the right to wealth, status and the complete obedience of the man who claimed to love her.” Sherlock paused and wondered if he should share the thoughts arising from following that mental pathway. “Why do people expect so much?” The words slipped out unbidden and Sherlock instantly regretted them when he saw the startled expression on Lestrade's face.

But the other man surprised him. He just shrugged his usual world-weary shrug that Sherlock knew could mean anything from “it's a funny old world, innit?” to “whatever I could say in response to that statement doesn't bear saying, so I won't”.

“No idea. Depends on what you mean by 'so much' I guess.”

The man didn't pursue the subject any further and Sherlock startled himself with the discovery that Lestrade seemed to possess a fair amount of discretion. Perhaps Mycroft had been right about him, then.

“I suppose it's a good thing Mrs Klein's parents were already dead when she killed her son and herself.”

Sherlock didn't bother hiding his relief at the return to their previous subject of discussion. “Why is that?”

“They'd already lost their younger daughter. There was a link between the two cases in the database. You wouldn't have seen anything about it in the Klein case file,” he added on seeing the dismay on Sherlock's face. “It's another cold case, now I think of it. She ran away from home, early 70s, I think it said.”

“Like Carol Evans from Leeds.”

“Yep. There must have been a lot of it going around back then. Like venereal disease.” Lestrade stifled a laugh. “It was the 70s; lots of social change going on. Maybe she didn't want to be the nice Jewish girl anymore. Maybe she wanted to be a hippy and do lots of drugs.”

“I knew I was born twenty years too late.”

“No way you'd have been a hippy. You'd have had to stop washing and wear a kaftan. Nah, you'd have been a teddy boy.”

“I have no idea what that means, but based on the name alone, I'd say not.”

~ + ~ 

**Friday, February 13**

“So. Moran.”

“What?” Doctor Deborah looked genuinely startled at Sherlock's opening gambit; then her expression shifted to wary.

“Why is that always people's response when I say that name?” _And why do you think there's any other reason I actually come here today?_

“Who else have you been saying it to?”

“You've seen the MI5 file on Moran, haven't you?”

“Of course not; he's nothing to do with me. And there's no way I'd be allowed anywhere near it even if I wanted to or if it was relevant to you, which it's not, because of the family connection.”

“What _is_ this family connection you keep alluding to?”

“Didn't I tell you? I thought I had. Sorry. He's Maris' cousin. Her mother is his father's half-sister. So maybe they're second cousins.” She made a gesture of irritation at nothing in particular. “I can never keep that sort of thing straight; that's what I have Maris for.”

“Surely not just for that.”

She gave him one of her snide little smiles. “Oh, most certainly not just for that.” She laughed as he blanched. “You are such a prude. Anyway, what does Moran have to do with the price of fish? I mean, he's an evil little shit. Unfortunately, being an evil little shit isn't illegal in this country. Lucky for you.”

“Doctor, I'm crushed. And it would be my brother that would have to worry, not me.”

“Again, why the interest in Moran? Isn't your DI keeping you busy? You want even more old cases to knock your head against?”

“Detective _Chief_ Inspector Lestrade would be offended at the demotion, you know. And yes, so far he's managed to occupy a few of my days. But I've run out of leads to pursue regarding Moriarty.”

“Why would you think Moran has anything to do with Moriarty?” She paused and seemed to give the idea some consideration. “To be honest, I don't see it. I mean, I'm not the 'consulting detective' here, but my instincts say no.”

“Your _instincts_? What use are those? This is about data.”

“So you have _data_ connecting Moran with Moriarty?”

Sherlock turned his attention to the Schiele, which he knew she knew was a tell that he hadn't managed to train himself out of. “Not yet.”

“Right. So where do you think you're going to get this data?”

“I need to see the MI5 file on Moran. Supposedly there isn't even a Met file anymore.”

“Your chum at the Met told you that?”

Sherlock swore to himself for the slip-up. “No.”

“Well, I know your brother didn't tell you. If you want your friend out of the way, just keep forgetting to keep your mouth shut about that, why don't you.” She gave him a disdainful look almost worthy of Mycroft before continuing. “I simply have no access to anything related to Moran. And I don't think it would be of any help to you, anyway.”

“So there's nowhere else I can get the data I need about Moriarty?”

Sherlock knew in an instant his attempted ruse was a complete failure. The Doctor's disdain acquired an added layer of dismissive amusement; she'd known instantly where he'd been trying to lead her and she was having none of it. He tried to salvage something out of the conversation. “Well, what did you expect me to think you were doing? Forcing me to meet his ex-wife. What was I supposed to think?”

The woman laughed out loud. “You thought—? Oh my god. What an imagination.” She continued chortling at his expense, apparently amused at his growing consternation as it transitioned into what he knew probably appeared to be pique. “Oh, hell,” she said as she wiped her eyes. “It was nothing like that. It's just that Christina knows her stuff; she really is one of the top people in the field. And our forensics are shit with things like that. If you want to find half-deleted child porn on a hard drive, yeah, they're who you go to, but being able to look at a file and see if it's been tampered with, that sort of thing, she's way better. And going to her meant we didn't have to wait three months for the results.”

Sherlock kept his expression stony to hide the shameful embarrassment he felt at having been so shown up. “She's no use at all, then.”

“Not in that vein, no. They've been separated a long time and I think she's made a concerted effort to steer clear of him whenever possible. I told you this already.” She grimaced. “Well, I suppose that tells me all I need to know about whether you listen to anything I say.” She fidgeted with her lighter for a few seconds. “So, how are your friends with the baby? Have you managed to drop it yet?”

“What?” Sherlock's head spun at the change of subject, and the frankly surreal turn of her last question.

“Sorry. Inside joke. Back when our friends were all breeding, Maris and I had a joke that I always seemed to drop them when one got handed off to me.”

“Your friends?”

“Ha ha. The babies.”

He smirked. “Did you drop them on purpose? I can imagine why you would if people insisted on forcing their brats on you.”

“If I were a Freudian—which I most definitely am not—I'd say it was sublimated aggression manifesting as clumsiness, subconsciously trying to kill their spawn in order to recover our former friendship.”

“Sounds a reasonable plan.”

“I take it you're not over at theirs every day cooing over the cradle.”

“What a revolting prospect.”

“I agree, but some people take to that, you know.”

“Idiots. I can assure you I have no intention of joining the ranks of the baby fetishists.”

“Good man. I'd hate to lose another team member. But you've seen them since the baby?”

“Of course. Not drooling over the thing does not equate to never seeing them again. There is such a thing as babysitters.” He paused. “They're busy at the moment. Settling in. I imagine the child is somewhat disruptive of their routine.” Sherlock recognised that he was startling to babble and shut his jaws with a snap and slouched further into his chair. He also recognised that Doctor Deborah saw all of this.

“But you're happy for them, then?”

“Of course I'm happy for them. They're my friends and they've just had a baby. Being happy for them is, I believe, the requisite response.”

“Requisite.” Deborah shifted in her chair and folded her hands across her stomach. Sherlock knew this meant she was about to start pontificating on matters psychological, so he engaged his Doctor Deborah filters and stared at her as she began to speak, while allowing most of his mind to wander. He knew she was only asking about John and Mary to divert him from talking about Moran and his ex-wife. No matter the Doctor's assurances on the matter, Sherlock strongly suspected there was more to it than she let on. 

As she droned on, he wondered when she'd decided that she actually was his psychiatrist rather than just his handler. Considering there'd been virtually no handling up to that point, he wondered if boredom was causing her to revert to her usual patterns and the ham-fisted attempts at psychiatry had slipped in without her noticing. “I was under the impression you were my handler, not my doctor. What's that ridiculous term? Scope creep?”

“Occupational hazard, I suppose. Not that there's been much to handle.”

“The more time I spend with you, Doctor, the more I think Mycroft's behind this.” He gestured between them. 

“He wasn't even there when the decision was made.” Her tone took a decided turn toward the Arctic as she continued. “And I can assure you the person who made the decision did not have your brother's interests or concerns at heart.”

If correct, that was an interesting little tidbit to file away. Unless she was lying. Or Sir Edwin was lying about the decision having been made by Lady Smallwood. Or if they were both telling the truth, then he and his brother were in considerably more trouble than Sherlock had imagined. “So you're acknowledging this now? My little visit with your friends and my tête-à-tête with Sir Edwin? I was starting to wonder if they'd bothered to keep you informed.”

“Do you remember our first meeting? In the middle of your little rant you mentioned something about people wanting to take your brother down a peg or two. And that you seemed to think this was a good idea.”

Sherlock shrugged as he straightened the cuffs of his shirt. 

“Well, you're getting your wish. And I hate to tell you— No, actually, I don't hate to tell you, I'm quite happy to. That if your brother falls you go with him. And they won't bother with the aeroplane to Kosovo for him. They'll just give him to the CIA and I do not want to speculate on what they'd do to him.”

Sherlock made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “Don't be melodramatic; Mycroft practically runs the CIA, as well. It's riddled with his chums. And even if he was under threat, how could you possibly know that? You're nowhere near important enough to have access to that kind of intelligence.”

“Sherlock, everyone knows it. And a lot of those people are wetting themselves at the prospect of watching Mycroft Holmes fall. Can you imagine the number of enemies he's made getting to where he is? The number of ambitious, spiteful arseholes who think they can step into his shoes once he's gone? And if he falls, your life expectancy is going to be a lot less than six months.”

She let him digest that; her tone had returned to her usual bemused detachment by the time she continued. “You're reasonably clever.” She paused to smirk at his eye roll. “I'd have thought you'd have figured all that out for yourself.”

“Oh, I had. Most of it. Except for the part about the CIA.”

“Which is partly as a result of your spectacular cock-up with the Adler woman. The Americans really do not appreciate having their time and resources wasted by amateurs.”

The last word stung more than Sherlock would have expected. He wasn't an amateur at anything he put his mind to. He was a buccaneer not a bureaucrat, and if Doctor Deborah and the shadowy forces at the top of MI5 didn't like that they could go to hell. He was at least willing to take some sort of action to protect people instead of just sitting around conference tables and talking about how best to collaborate with the enemy. “Don't be ridiculous. The information I gave them by breaking the password on her phone was more than enough in exchange for any trouble I might have caused.”

There was a thin smile on Doctor Deborah's face, as if she thought she could read his mind. “Apparently not. Or if it was, then Magnussen changed their minds. You've established a bit of a pattern haven't you?”

He stood. “Well, seeing as you have no actual work for me, and also seeing as you are not actually my psychiatrist, I'm off back to London. Ta ta.” He waggled his fingers at her, pulled on his coat, and strode out the door.

As he turned onto the pavement in front of the house, a grey Land Rover pulled into the drive. Sherlock put aside his fury for a moment to stop. He was curious what the Doctor's wife looked like; he'd barely caught a glimpse of her silhouette before. Judging by the state of the Rover, he guessed: ex-Sloaney, horsey, at least 5 foot 6, 50 to 55 years of age. Probably blonde. A moment later his curiosity was satisfied; with a smile he turned towards the main road to search for a cab back to the station.

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wondering what Mycroft and Lady Smallwood and not-Anthea and the rest were up to? Find out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/16507024).


	7. Note to self: stop working with lunatics

**Saturday, February 14**

When the text arrived from Lestrade, Sherlock was almost surprised. He'd started to assume that Irene was never going respond to his letter, and he had been mentally preparing himself for the wrench it would throw into his investigation of the case.

Lestrade finally came by that afternoon, and Sherlock noted he was looking even more haggard than usual. Sherlock didn't bother asking because he knew the man would either brush aside the question, or worse, actually burden Sherlock with his problems.

“Mycroft cleared you to give me my mail, I see,” Sherlock commented as he took the small envelope from Lestrade.

“Didn't even tell him I had it.” Lestrade dropped into John's chair. He gestured at the envelope Sherlock was holding between two fingertips almost at arm's length. “You can read that now if you want. Don't mind me.”

“I never mind you, Lestrade.” Sherlock felt the thickness of the envelope as the other man chuckled. “Three pages; she obviously has something to say. Though whether it will be of any use is another matter.”

“Okay, then.” Lestrade levered himself out of the chair and looked around the flat, not bothering to hide his curiosity about the current state of it. Sherlock wondered if after all their years of acquaintance, Lestrade was still stupid enough to expect Sherlock to leave his rig lying around for anyone to see. “I'll leave you to it, then.”

Sherlock just hummed in response, his mind already past the man's departure.

“You're welcome, by the way.”

“Yes, thank you, Lestrade.”

“You could _try_ saying that like you're not dismissing your butler or something.”

Sherlock looked up to the man who was looking down at him with a greater than usual amount of irritation on his face. “But you are my butler. In this matter, at least. Feel free to call it go-between, or fixer, or whatever makes you happy.”

“Thanks for that, Holmes.”

Ordinarily, one of Sherlock's favourite things about Lestrade was that the man didn't get upset by Sherlock's lack of what ordinary people referred to as manners. But Sherlock could tell he might have crossed one of those invisible lines he never knew about until he'd blasted through them. He was about to apologise, but Lestrade beat him to it. With a muttered, “I'm off, then,” the man shuffled out the door before Sherlock managed to gather together the words to mollify him without coming across as too insincere.

Once he was alone with his letter, Sherlock felt a moment of trepidation. The potentiality of it had allowed him a fragment of hope over the past few weeks. But breaking the seal and reading the words would lead him down one of two paths. And he didn't want to face the limitations imposed by either of them, so he stayed his hand for a minute. Eventually, annoyance at himself for succumbing to melodrama forced his hand and he tore the envelope open to spread the three (ha!) sheets over his crossed legs and stare at Irene's surprisingly neat handwriting.

_Hello, gorgeous thing,_

_How is my favourite rampant Id? You never mentioned. I won't bore you with the luscious details of my life, but things are well. Isn't that what you're supposed to say in a letter? I never bothered to learn the form; and I don't think I've ever written a letter in my life, so I expect I'll break every convention there is. But I don't know why I'm bothering; convention is wasted on you and you wouldn't believe it of me anyway._

_So, there's the chit-chat done with._

_As to the specifics of your request, there's not a lot I can tell you._

Sherlock's heart sank at the words and he swore under his breath.

 _The little scoundrel never told me anything, not intentionally. Unintentionally, he told me he was_ obsessed _with you (and perhaps a little in love with you, if he was capable of it), but I imagine you'd figured that out for yourself when he blew his brains out in order to impress you. (Note to self: stop working with lunatics.)_

_Other than that I don't think I have much for you. Oh, he was always full of hints but nothing of substance. He was an even worse tease than you, implying all sorts of powers that he never demonstrated. He was mad as a glue-sniffing ferret, of course, but a genius in his own way. Just like you, my lovely. He always seemed to know you were just his kind of man, though I'm more glad than I can say that you resisted his fumbling flirtations, or I wouldn't have you to tempt from the path of rectitude anymore._

_But he and I never discussed his business, other than you and Mr I-only-let-myself-be-touched-by-boys-I-can-pay-off. He never mentioned other clients, of course. Discretion was a significant part of the service he provided, as you would expect. But he had a perverse desire to brag, which was very naughty of him considering his line of work. Sometimes he would drop ridiculous hints about shadowy secret powers that he could call on. But unlike you, he had a very well-developed fantasy life, so who knows what was fact and what delusion with him._

_One thing I can tell you: once when I spoke to him he said that he was in America. I've no idea if that's any help to you, even if it was true. Perhaps he had clients there. Perhaps his shadowy “supporters” were there. I think he was just addicted to lying; he was a sad little boy in some ways, wasn't he? But as I said, mad as a box of badgers, and not exactly reliable. I suppose that was a good thing, wasn't it? Imagine the fun he'd have created for you and your boring brother if he'd actually been properly competent at troublemaking._

_I have to say I'm disappointed you broke your promise to visit me; you definitely deserve at least one good paddling for leading a girl on like that. I'd been quite looking forward to seeing you again, my beautiful monster. I'd even laid aside a special supply of silk bandages for my hands in anticipation of shredding them on those cheekbones of yours. So when are you going to stop trying to be your brother and come have dinner with me? After all, you asked if I was hungry. Or was that just another of your teases._

Sherlock sat motionless, fixed in a calculating repose.

It was not exactly what he'd expected. Not exactly _nothing_ , but not exactly any help, either. What he felt in response was more resignation than the anger he thought he should be feeling at her asinine attempts at flirtation. All in all, it was an unsatisfactory end to weeks of waiting. His instinct was to dismiss the entire enterprise and he chastised himself for having placed any hopes in her at all.

Sherlock glanced at the last page of the letter. He wasn't surprised that she hadn't signed it, but some sort of salutation wouldn't have gone amiss. There was something off about the way the letter ended. He looked inside the envelope expecting to find another piece of paper, but it was empty. He wondered if there had been another sheet, and she'd forgotten to include it.

A notion came to mind and Sherlock took the last page into the kitchen. Almost embarrassed that he was allowing his mind to run off in this direction, he lit one of the burners of the hob. He held the piece of paper flat a foot or so above the flame and as he watched, the rest of the letter appeared at the foot of the page. How retro, he thought with a chuckle. 

_Kentucky, darling. Don't know if he was J's sponsor or boss or client, but I think the very big bad is in Kentucky, of all places. Do you hear banjos playing, too?_

_Love, I._

_P.S. I guess this means I won't see you again unless I make some sort of tedious Faustian bargain with Mr Repressed. Cue bored sighs all 'round._

Kentucky. Sherlock collected the rest of the letter and held it to the flame. He watched the pages burn in the sink, then waved a towel under the smoke alarm until it stopped shrieking at him.

Actual data. Data whose meaning he couldn't assess without more data, unfortunately, but it was something. Something he couldn't do anything with other than stew over impotently. But if accurate, this confirmed his suspicions that Moriarty had had operations outside Europe. 

_America. Might as well be the moon._

America meant he needed to speak to Mycroft about using his contacts in the CIA. Which was never going to happen, no matter what he might be willing to promise in exchange.

For a moment he considered drafting in Lestrade in his capacity as go-between to argue his case. But doing so would require explaining everything behind the letter, the knowledge of which would raise Lestrade's risk profile to a level Sherlock found unacceptable, so he dismissed the idea.

One way or another, this case was going to be the death of him, he thought. Then he sighed. Bad puns. Just what he needed at this stage of the game.

~ + ~

**Monday, February 16**

“That's a weird coincidence.”

Sherlock looked up from his microscope to where John was watching the telly, one hand holding a bottle for Grace tucked up in her carrier on the table. “What's a coincidence?”

“Well, not exactly a coincidence. You remember Moran? The Parliament bomber?” At Sherlock's look, John's expression turned rueful. “'Course you do.” He gestured at the television with his free hand. “His daughter was in an accident on the weekend. Now they're saying it was a hit and run. One of the girls died.”

“What?” Sherlock jumped to his feet and strode over to where he could watch the news report. After it had finished, Sherlock stood in the middle of the room, aware of John's eyes on him, which communicated the questions the man didn't seem to want to say aloud.

“Not a coincidence, then?” John finally asked.

“Highly unlikely.”

“Of course. 'The universe is never so lazy'.”

“Rarely so lazy. Not never, regardless of what Mycroft thinks.”

“You think this is some sort of fall-out from what happened then?”

“How could she be connected to her father's terrorist activities? She was only fifteen at the time.”

“Lots of teenage terrorists around.”

“You need to stop reading _The Mail_. And this is London, not Lebanon.” Sherlock paused for a moment while he recalled the case details and went over them in his mind. “No, I don't think so. There's nothing in the pattern that indicates a child's involvement.”

“Sometimes an accident is just an accident.”

Sherlock glanced down to the faintly impish smile on John's face. “Why are you smiling? Someone's daughter is dead, John. How insensitive of you.”

“Yeah, sorry Mr Sensitivity,” John replied in tones entirely free of anything resembling contrition as he turned his attention back to his own daughter, who was feebly squirming.

Sherlock returned to his microscope, inexplicably disturbed by John's reaction to the news report. He let his mind free associate around these new facts: someone had purposely tried to hurt or kill Sebastian Moran's daughter. What would motivate someone to attempt such a thing? The idea of his daughter being involved in his espionage or terrorist activities was ludicrous and could be dismissed out of hand. But even the Met had been able to eventually figure out that it had not been a random accident, which meant that at least one of the three girls involved had been a target. And one of the girls being Moran's daughter was simply too coincidental for it to have been a random event.

The attack had taken place on Friday night; the girls had snuck out of the dorm of their boarding school to head off for a night of illicit clubbing. So they'd been watched, tracked by their attacker, who'd been waiting for the best opportunity to act without being caught. But why attack Moran's daughter?

Because they couldn't get to Moran himself, his mind answered in Mycroft's dismissive tones. But there is a son, as well, Sherlock remembered from his internet searches on the former couple. Most people would consider the heir the higher value target. Perhaps he was less accessible; perhaps he had been watched as well, and the first good opportunity had been for the daughter. Perhaps the attacker thought moving against the youngest and most vulnerable member of the family best served their interests, or would have the greatest effect.

Or perhaps someone—an suspiciously well-informed someone—was telling the former Lady Moran to keep her nose out of the “Moriarty business”. Two possible motives; a _double_ coincidence. Mycroft must be having a field day with that one, Sherlock thought.

It was most likely, however, that the motive had been to send a message to Moran. The attacker had to know that the news would get to Moran; that fact spoke to the idea that Moran was likely still alive (or that whoever was responsible thought he was), and that Moran either still had contacts in England or was himself still in the country.

“Why do you think they went after the girl? Was it to do with her father?” John's broke through Sherlock's reverie.

“The most logical conclusion.” Sherlock glanced up to meet John's eyes. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with the Moriarty case?” Sherlock instantly regretted the snap in his tone. John flushed slightly and turned his attention back to the baby, which was beginning to fuss a little, setting Sherlock's teeth on edge.

“Is everything in the universe about bloody Moriarty?” John muttered as he gently jiggled the baby's carrier in an attempt to settle her.

“Everything and nothing. He's touched almost everyone I know, John, but no one _knows_ anything about him. Or they won't talk, won't give me their data, won't help, won't do anything but block every single path to every single bit of information I should be able to get my hands on!” Sherlock didn't realise he was nearly shouting at the end until he'd stopped. John stared at him with a carefully blank expression, then turned to his now-crying daughter.

“Sorry about that.” Sherlock gestured towards the baby.

“I'd thought I was clear I don't want to be involved.”

“So you keep saying. Which is curious, considering your interest in Moran. And his daughter. Do you expect me to pretend to not be working on it in order to protect your sensibilities?”

“Since when are Moran and Moriarty connected?” John groaned. “Of _course_ they are, silly me. Everything's connected, to you.” At Sherlock's dismissive look, John continued, not at all abashed. “Just a general question, so keep your knickers on: why do you think they're connected?”

“Moran's attack on Parliament was entirely out of character. He never did things for show. He was no zealot, and it was such an overtly political act. On first appearance, anyway. Ordinarily, he sold himself to the highest bidder—” 

“Typical Tory,” John muttered.

Sherlock couldn't resist a small smile before he continued. “He kept his head down, usually, and he had a successful business model that worked for him for more than fifteen years. Why would he change that, especially if there was no obvious profit in it?” An idea popped into Sherlock's mind and he carefully filed it away in his mental Pending tray.

“You think he was working for whoever created that video?”

“There's circumstantial evidence that connects the two.”

“That sounds pretty tenuous.”

“I know.” Sherlock watched John as they discussed the edges of the case John had consistently refused to help with, on the alert for signs of an impending tantrum. Sherlock wondered if he could get away with sharing some of this concerns about the unavailability of data (beyond his previous shouting fit), and how strangely Mycroft had been behaving since Christmas, but John nipped that idea in the bud before Sherlock could say anything.

“I haven't changed my mind about it, you know. The Moriarty case.”

For the sake of keeping the peace, Sherlock ensured there was no trace of disappointment in his voice. “Yes, I know.”

They stared at one another across the room for a few seconds, until John glanced over to his daughter. He unbuckled her from her carrier and tucked her against his shoulder. While he gently rubbed circles over her back and patted her, he looked across to Sherlock, who understood the warning in both the look and the gesture.

As Sherlock returned to the kitchen, he asked, “Why are you here, John? Honestly?”

“You want me to be honest?” John paused, as if considering an unexpected request. “Okay. Honesty. Today I worked an eight-hour shift at the clinic. This was the first time I've worked a shift less than eleven hours since before Christmas. I could be at home with Mary right now, but I'm not. I'm here with you. You think that doesn't mean anything, but it does. You're my best friend, despite the fact you're an obnoxious idiot a lot of the time. Of course I want to see you. And it feels like you're avoiding us.”

“John—”

“But I'm not running around London, carrying her.” He patted Grace. “While we hunt up clues. If you want to talk about cases, yeah, I'll listen. But don't expect me to drop everything else in my life to go chasing after you.” 

“I don't expect you to drop everything.”

“I meant that metaphorically.”

“Big word, for you.”

“Fuck off.”

“That's more like it.”

John flipped him the bird with the hand holding Grace against his shoulder. Sherlock chuckled and returned his attention to his microscope.

A few minutes later, John tucked a now-sleeping Grace back into her carrier, then ambled over to the kitchen and watched Sherlock work.

“If you're looking for someone to play with, why not ask Molly? Or Greg.”

“Too much history with Molly.” Sherlock paused and he could see that John was pleased to see him exercising some discretion when it came to discussing Molly. “Lestrade's too boring.”

“You never thought that before.”

“That's because he used to give me cases, before. And he belongs to Mycroft.”

“He just gave you four cold cases. And I'm sure belonging to Mycroft would come as a surprise. ”

“Not as much as you'd think.”

John looked startled. “Really? I mean— Greg used to be married. To a woman. Though these days—”

“For heaven's sake, John, don't be absurd. Lestrade's the straightest man in London. And Mycroft _never_ sleeps down. Which I suppose explains his general state of mind since he's got to where he is now. Who's he going to shag? The Queen?”

To Sherlock's delight, John made a choking sound. “Jesus, Sherlock. Give a man a bit of warning. And wouldn't it be Prince Philip?”

“Charles. Mycroft's always prided himself on forward planning.”

John grimaced. “Thanks for that. Really— ugh.” 

Sherlock himself had had many sleepless nights avoiding the nightmares induced by the thought of Mycroft and sex and couldn't help a little merciless glee at sharing the pain. “Don't be missish, John. Some people are attracted to a pretty face, others to power.”

“Uh-huh. Watch out, David Cameron.”

Sherlock snorted. “What makes you think _he_ has any power?”

“Because he's the Prime Minister?”

“The Home Secretary's more Mycroft's thing, anyway.” At John's incredulous look, Sherlock added, “I don't believe he's ever been particularly fussy about gender. Much too middle class a notion for him. Power is what draws him; I doubt he cares much about the package.”

“Do you think he ever slept with Mandelson?” Sherlock contemplated whether or not to share an indiscretion, while John continued. “The timing would be right, for when he started in the government. Early 90s,” John mused. Then his expression flipped from curiosity to revulsion. “How the _hell_ did we get onto this subject? _Jesus._ ” John pulled a face. 

“Lestrade.”

“Oh, yeah, Greg. Have you seen him lately?”

“I know you have his number; why don't you call him and ask? Are you and Mary job-sharing the surveillance duties, now?”

John rolled his eyes and turned to check on the baby before plopping himself back down in front of the television. “Weeks, Sherlock.”

“What?” He looked up from his microscope.

“It's going to take me _weeks_ to get that image out of my mind.”

Sherlock chuckled. “Then my work here is done.” _Gotcha right back, John. Serves you right for refusing to work with me._

~ + ~

Later that night, after John had left and his experiment had lost its allure, Sherlock reviewed the admittedly scant information about the attack on Siobhan Moran and her friends that had been given in the report, and followed up any references he could find to it on-line. And the more he read, the more he realised there was no possible motive for the attack that Sherlock could see other than the connection of one of the girls to Sebastian Moran.

If that was the case, what was the reason for the attack? To hurt Moran through his daughter? To warn him? And if so, about what? The man had been in MI5 custody for more than a year. Presumably, Moran's family had been available that entire time. Why had the attackers acted now? There had been nothing in the news about anyone in the family, nothing that might indicate why the attack had happened now instead of months ago.

Sherlock couldn't help wondering if the timing was related to his conversation with Doctor Deborah. But even he had to admit the notion seemed somewhat self-absorbed, though there appeared to be nothing else that might have triggered it. However, the reasoning that flowed from that thought made no sense based on what else he knew about the Doctor. That she had told him, anyways. 

Around him all he saw were people he couldn't trust, people who probably were lying to him at all times, though he could only guess why or to what purpose. And the one person he knew he could trust without reservation refused to help him. He began to question everything Doctor Deborah had ever told him, then forced himself to calm down as the anger these thoughts elicited would in no way help him sort out any of it.

Sherlock wanted to talk to Mycroft. It was an unfamiliar sentiment, one he recognised as based on desperation. John was refusing to play, Mary simply didn't know enough about the players, and Lestrade was too skittish to be of much use. Though there would definitely be a Met case file on the attack on the girls, he mused. Mycroft was the only person who would be able to shed any light on Sherlock's current situation, but seemed unable to for reasons Sherlock could only speculate on, beyond what he'd gleaned from his conversations with Doctor Deborah. Sherlock pondered doing the almost-unthinkable and pursuing the girl's mother, then using Mycroft's resultant outrage to act as leverage in demanding he share his information about Moran and Moriarty. It was an underhanded ploy, but then, that was why Mycroft would respond to it. Whether or not that response would be useful was another matter.

Sherlock checked the time on his phone; it was well after office hours, so the former Lady Moran would be at home. Or she would be with her daughter at the hospital. Not even Sherlock would be so low as to go after her there. Doing so would likely cause the top of Mycroft's head to blow off—not exactly conducive to fruitful negotiations. He would just have to wait until the woman returned to the Archives, and contact her there.

So he needed to keep himself occupied until then. Sherlock glanced around the room and decided to take down the photos, sketches and notes on the Robichaud case still covering one wall. As he returned them to their folders, he remembered what he and Lestrade had discussed the previous week about the two cold cases. The similarities between them and how they were both about dysfunctional families. And about Mrs Klein's sister.

Halfway through defoliating the wall, Sherlock abandoned the work to go back to the files for Carol Evans, the girl from Leeds who had disappeared in London in 1971. The case he'd been so sure would bring John back.

As he flipped through the folders again, thoughts of John and his current dilemma hovered around the periphery of his mind. Sherlock held them off with one mental hand while the other dealt with the Evans case, turning it over to examine the possibly interesting twist of the similar disappearance of Rose Klein's sister at about the same time. Sherlock wondered if they were both victims of a serial killer. He wondered if that was the real reason that Lestrade had mentioned Mrs Klein's sister, to interest him in another case that for some reason the man felt he couldn't offer to Sherlock openly.

Sherlock dropped the Evans file and rummaged in the pile below his chair until he found the folder for the Klein case. At the back of the folder he found the document he'd read before without noticing one telling detail. It was a copy of Rose Klein's death certificate, and as he expected, it noted her maiden name: Oppenheimer.

~ + ~

**Tuesday, February 17**

The next morning, Sherlock fretted until the clock ticked up to 9.00, when he felt it would be safe to call Christina Martin. He barely remembered to ask for her under her maiden name when the receptionist picked up the call. There was no answer at her office and as the voicemail message played, Sherlock swore under his breath. Just how injured was her daughter, he wondered. And did the woman have a secret medical degree? Why else was she _still_ at the hospital after three days?

Sherlock left a message asking her to call him, then he sat down to wait. After five minutes with no return call he began to fidget. After ten, in a fit of desperation he made a distracted attempt at tidying the kitchen. The attraction of that activity as a time-killer soon paled and he turned his attention to the rest of the flat. He finished removing the Robichaud material from the wall and re-filing it, then finding a place for the case folders in one of his boxes. The Klein case file he left out, and after half an hour of waiting for Christina Martin to just return his call already, he turned to it and the internet in an effort to pass the time while he waited.

Now that he had a surname for the missing girl, he was able to do a search of an on-line newspaper archive to look for press coverage of the disappearance. By the time Christina called, he'd found out most of the publicly available information about the disappearance of Rose Klein's younger sister. He was still reeling a bit from what he'd found when his phone finally rang and so he was a bit unprepared for it. He stumbled through his greetings to the woman, who sounded tired and a bit chagrined at his call.

“Did your brother ask you to call me?”

Sherlock paused, set back by the question. “No. Why would he?”

There was a pause of a few seconds before she replied. “You're not calling about what happened to my daughter.”

“Not really. I was hoping to see you; I have questions about something possibly related to that.”

“How opaque of you.” He heard a faint sigh. “I'm afraid that's not possible, Mr Holmes.”

“Did Mycroft tell you not to speak to me?”

“Obviously not, or I wouldn't have asked if he'd told you to call me.”

Sherlock fumed for a moment. “There is something I was hoping you could shed some light on.”

“Relating to a case you're working on,” she finished for him. “I'm afraid not.” Her tone had shifted from chagrined to bored and the tone set Sherlock's teeth on edge; it reminded him of Mycroft. He began to suspect she knew exactly what he was calling about, most likely because Mycroft had warned her that Sherlock would be pursuing her on the subject. “Mr Holmes—”

“Please call me Sherlock.”

“Sherlock, of course.” Her tone was friendlier saying his name and he suspected she was smiling while saying it, though he had no idea if that bode well or ill for his chances of getting her to talk to him. “I'm sure there's no help I can provide with any case you might be working on. I just don't have any information that would be helpful to a man in your line of work.”

The woman seemed to have friendly obstreperousness down to an art form. But he had to keep trying, he knew. “I doubt that's the case, Ms Martin.”

“I thought I asked you to call me Christina when we met.” 

Now she was definitely smiling, and Sherlock strongly suspected it was at his expense. “Of course. But I think you're underestimating the usefulness of what you know. I've seen it in many cases where witnesses don't realise the value of it.”

Now she was laughing, though it wasn't an unfriendly laugh. He was making a bit of a fool of himself and she was letting him know to stop. “On the contrary, Sherlock. I know the exact value of what I know, when I know things. I am in the information business, after all. And I am most positively sure there's nothing I can tell you.”

Well, that was a telling comment, he thought. Sherlock was stumped. Charm wasn't going to work, he could see. But he sensed he hadn't alienated her with his questions and he was even more convinced that for some reason or other she'd been expecting his call and knew exactly what was behind his questions. Sherlock decided not to press her, so thanked her for her time and signed off. 

_Bloody Mycroft._ He'd told her that Sherlock would be calling. Of course he had. He and Lestrade had discussed her involvement days before, when Sherlock first called Lestrade about the Moran file. Mycroft had even used Lestrade to try to warn Sherlock not to contact her. His brother really was circling the wagons on the Moran issue, which just convinced Sherlock even more that there was something there, though he had no idea why his brother would be trying to prevent him from finding it.

On the other hand, the woman's reticence could just mean that she knew their conversation was being overheard and she was exercising due caution. Or perhaps, as she said, knowing the exact value of the information she had meant she wasn't willing to give it away for free. 

In the end, Sherlock reasoned he wasn't going to get her to talk with Mycroft meddling in the background. He would need to see her in person; she might be more amenable without listeners, and Sherlock would be able to get a proper read on her if they spoke face-to-face. But that was a plan for another day, he reasoned, as the other case teased him with its flagrant intrigue.

Throughout his musings on Christina Martin, Sherlock's mind had been grinding away on the information he'd found about Rose Klein's sister. The first bit of data he'd found had been most shocking, the girl's name: Deborah Oppenheimer. Sherlock couldn't help but wonder at this other coincidence. Again, those pesky words of Mycroft's played in his ear. Sherlock wondered how common a name it was; he would ask Doctor Deborah when he saw her on Friday.

Like Carol Evans, his girl from Leeds, Deborah Oppenheimer had disappeared in the summer of 1971. Unlike Carol Evans, Deborah Oppenheimer had been sixteen (instead of eighteen), an early school leaver with no academic distinctions, and obviously a runaway. One of the published interviews with two of her friends had indicated she'd been in conflict with her parents for years, and the friends had not been surprised at her disappearance. The press coverage seemed to have been due mostly to the Oppenheimer's efforts to track down their daughter, and most of the coverage had focused on them, their anguish at her disappearance, and their appeals to her through the press to return home. There didn't appear to have been much in the way of Met efforts to track the girl down. As Lestrade had said, there seemed to have been a bit of an epidemic of teenage runaways at the time. And as there was no evidence of foul play, the police likely had just filed the case away, assuming there really was no case. 

There didn't appear to be much for Sherlock to go on, not until he saw the Met case file. For there had to be one, regardless of what the police thought of the merits of expending scarce resources on it. If nothing else it would give him a list of who the police had spoken to and the girl's other pertinent information, some of which might be helpful. 

So Sherlock sent Lestrade a text asking for the file; as the man had brought the case to his attention in the first place, Sherlock didn't anticipate meeting any resistance in the matter of _this_ file.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, February 18**

In the middle of a fascinating dream about chasing an elephant through the Amazonian forest while riding a dragon, Sherlock was woken by three telephone calls in quick succession. By the time the fourth call came in, he was moderately awake and managed to roll over and check the identity of his caller before it went to voicemail.

Mycroft.

At the fifth call in immediate succession, Sherlock considered dropping his phone into the half-full cup of cold tea on his night stand, then realised cutting off this mode of communication would likely result in the man sending a minion with a replacement, a course of action Sherlock instinctively recoiled against. So he picked up the call and swore to himself when Mycroft got the first word in, again.

“Good afternoon, little brother.”

“It's morning, Mycroft.” Sherlock checked the time on his phone. 12.01 pm. _Damn_.

“I'd make some trite enquiry as to your wellbeing, but we both know that's not the reason for my call.”

“Of course not, as you have no concern for anyone's wellbeing but your own.”

“So you keep insisting. The reason for my call is to ask you to cease harassing Christina Martin. I thought it had been made clear to you—”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, 'why'?”

“Why should I not speak to her? And I wasn't 'harassing' her. I just asked to speak to her about a case I'm investigating. She said no, so I hung up. Where in that sequence of events has 'harassment' taken place?”

“You will leave her alone, Sherlock. She has nothing whatsoever to do with any case you're investigating. Including the cold cases Lestrade gave you.”

“Well, you know what the solution to that is. Give me the data I need yourself.”

Mycroft sighed and Sherlock could see him at his desk, watching three screens, multi-tasking as he took a minute out of his day to deal with his annoying little brother. “As I've told you before, Sherlock, I have no data to give you. And as she has nothing to give you either, you will leave Christina alone.”

“Oh, will I? I see your sticky fingerprints on everything, everywhere I look, Mycroft, every block and barricade I run into. Are you afraid I might solve it before you? And you call _me_ childish. No, I will not leave her alone until you do your damned job and help me. And why do you care if I talk to her?”

“Oh for heaven's sake, Sherlock. Your paranoia is really most disturbing. Of course I'm not trying to impede your work on the Moriarty case; it would hardly be in my interest to do so. But Christina is still quite upset by what happened to her daughter this past weekend and I will not have you upset her further.” Sherlock wanted to counter that the woman had hardly seemed anything close to upset when he'd spoken to her, but his brother didn't let him get a word in. “Do you understand?”

Sherlock drew a deep breath and paused a moment before responding, not refraining from injecting as much malice as he could that soon after waking into his words. “Have you been demoted back to field work, Mycroft? That fat arse of yours still smarting from the spanking you've received from the higher-ups? That must be quite the fall you've had; I can't imagine why you haven't broken your neck.” One of his brother's heavy, bored sighs accompanied Sherlock as he continued. “Or it is just you've found yourself a goldfish? How quaint!”

“Sherlock, really—”

“You're the one who compared your associates to goldfish. Have you decided to take one home? To be honest, I'm surprised at your choice. Not at all what—”

“Oh grow up, Sherlock.”

He could tell from the pitch of Mycroft's voice that he'd finally managed to touch a nerve; the man was genuinely angry, rather than his usual melodramatic show of annoyance. “Fine words coming from you, brother. Does she know about you? Your _predilections_?”

There was a pregnant pause before Mycroft responded, his voice heavy with a world-weariness that Sherlock suspected might be genuine, but with Mycroft it was difficult to tell what was real and what was put on for effect. “Christina is an old friend—”

“You don't have friends, Mycroft. You said so yourself.”

“Do you think so? Perhaps you should recall the scene from your 'memory palace'. You've never been very attentive when others are speaking, Sherlock. It has always been one of your greatest weaknesses.”

“Mycroft—”

“And yes, Christina qualifies as a friend. Now, leave her alone.”

“Or what?”

“Oh, for— Sherlock, I know why you're pursuing her. Just. Leave her alone. She does not know anything.” 

The man sounded almost sincere. Sherlock wondered if he practiced faking it by recording himself and listening to playbacks to get just the right hint of disappointed world-weariness. “She's been very well briefed.”

Mycroft laughed. “Trust me on this if nothing else. Christina takes no lead from me or anyone else. Nor do I fear for her safety from your questions. She's well able to look after herself.”

“So why the 'friendly' call?”

“Because you're being a pest, to someone who does not deserve it. While she's perfectly capable of making you feel the back of her hand, so to speak, it would upset her to have to do so. She has more important worries now and you have no right to add to them.”

Sherlock thought a show of compassion for the woman wouldn't go amiss in an attempt to mollify his brother. “How is her daughter?”

Mycroft paused at the change in tack. “Recovering at home. She is, of course, most upset at the death of her friend. And the third girl is facing a number of surgeries, I believe. Quite enough for a seventeen-year-old to cope with, don't you think?”

“Why are you so involved? You never get involved in other people's lives. Well, except mine, the one person who wants you to just bugger off.”

“And yet here you are, begging for my help and interfering in the life of one of my oldest friends. And I wouldn't have to be involved in your life if you weren't constantly forcing me to by your childish, self-destructive behaviour.”

“You aren't pretending to be interested in her, are you? That would be remarkably cruel, even for you.”

“Where did you get that frankly insane idea? Really, Sherlock, you need to get a grip on yourself. Why would anyone do such a thing?”

“You know she has information about a connection between her ex-husband and Moriarty. And you're trying to seduce it out of her. Oh my god, Mycroft. What a vicious little sod you are.”

There was a tense pause while Sherlock waited for the razor-edged explosion he was sure was coming. Mycroft's usual snide excuses in his usual bored tones would mean Sherlock was correct; if the man became angry, then Sherlock was likely off the mark.

“These pathetic delusions of yours do you no favours. You need to focus on acquiring real data relating to this case. I thought that was your speciality, ferreting out information that others can't.”

Sherlock grinned to himself. Bulls-eye.

“So for all our sakes, leave Christina _and her family_ alone,” Mycroft continued. “You're wasting your time pursuing that avenue. Again, I make myself clear?”

“Oh, you always make yourself clear. You're just wasting your breath, as usual.”

“Sherlock—”

He cut his brother off as he ended the call, then stared at the cracked ceiling of his bedroom, phone cradled on his chest, letting the new data about Mycroft settle into an ordered aggregation, slipping into their designated slots. His mind sifted through the conversation for the usual inferences and half-truths.

Mycroft was in trouble. Hardly news, but even more serious trouble than Sherlock had previously expected.

Mycroft was doing field work. Field work of a strange and somewhat degrading nature. There was no possibility that the relationship between his brother and Christina Martin _wasn't_ a fraud being perpetuated on the woman in order to extract information from her about her ex-husband. 

Then the connection clicked into place in his mind and he laughed. God, he loved his brother's gloriously, brazenly devious mind, when it was being turned against other people. Mycroft had confirmed not only just what Sherlock needed to know, but had done so right under the noses of Sherlock's MI5 watchers. All in the guise of ordering him to leave the woman alone. It was a minor masterwork, but a masterwork all the same.

Sherlock mentally applauded the man, master of the game. He wondered if Blythe _really_ knew what he was up against. Sherlock hoped not. He began to hope for a ringside seat for the final battle in the ridiculous horn-locking contest over who got to be the last bull standing in the paddock of the British Security Services. For there was no question in Sherlock's mind who the victor would eventually be.

~ + ~

**Thursday, February 19**

“You don't have to stand so far away, you know,” Mary called out from the kitchen.

Sherlock moved a step closer to the table and peered down at the tiny swaddled bundle squirming in her carrier. She looked like a grub in the process of metamorphosis. Blue eyes stared in his general direction; he held up a finger and moved it across her field of vision, but she apparently wasn't up to tracking fingers yet. He pulled out his notebook and jotted a reminder to check Mumsnet for when that was supposed to happen. He wondered if he should start a spreadsheet.

“What are you doing?”

“Collecting data, what does it look like?”

“Seeing as I never get to come along on your boys' own adventures, how would I know what collecting data looks like?” She placed the tea tray on the table and sat, grabbing the edge of the carrier to give it a jiggle.

“My offer still stands.”

“Nah. John's upset enough as it is. Best leave it.”

“Ah, the real reason you invited me over.”

“No. Well, not entirely. But it's like we never see you anymore.”

“I saw John three days ago.”

“Well, I haven't seen you in almost two weeks, Sherlock. The longest since—”

“Since Christmas. But you're—” He gestured at the baby. “Busy. With things.”

“You just called my daughter a thing.”

“Yes. Problem?”

She gave him a mock scowl and poured the tea. “I saw Molly yesterday. She said she's barely seen you.”

“I'm not working any active Met cases. No reason to go to Bart's.”

He got a telling glance in reply as she took a biscuit and bit into it, then moaned. Sherlock picked one up and smelt it; a perfectly ordinary bourbon cream, as far as he could tell without access to a lab. “Did you add something to these to elicit that frankly disturbing sound?”

“I haven't been allowed biscuits since September. Pre-natal diabetes. Just got my first normal blood sugar test yesterday.”

“So, booze and biccies all 'round from now on.”

“One biccie twice a day until I lose the baby weight. No boozing until she's off the—” She waved in the general direction of her chest. 

She laughed at his sudden discomfort as Sherlock blanched. “I think that defines 'too much information'.”

“Oh, come on, Sherlock. Even you've heard of breastfeeding.”

“Can we please change the subject. To _anything_.” He knew the moment he'd said the words that he'd given her the opening she'd been waiting for and cursed himself for running straight into her trap.

“John tells me you're still working on the Moriarty case.”

“Of course I am. I'd be in Kosovo if I wasn't.”

“He mentioned something about some woman named Moran.”

Sherlock stared at her as she sipped her tea, the picture of innocent curiosity, which he knew to be as false as her name. He wondered why she was fishing about Moran. “A woman. And a Moran. Not the same person.”

“Ah. So you're making progress?”

“Considering John's response to _anything_ I say or do related in any way to this case, I'm intrigued as to why he insists on discussing it with you.”

“Because I ask him.”

“Why? Especially as you know it upsets him.”

“It upsets him when _you_ talk about it, because he thinks you're pressuring him to work with you on it.”

“I've never done any such thing. He initiated our last conversation on the subject, then pitched a fit when I answered his questions.” He was satisfied to see the surprise on her face at that revelation. “No, I want him to work on the Carol Evans case.”

“Who's Carol Evans?”

“Someone who was murdered _forty-four_ years ago, but apparently even this is too life-threatening for your husband.”

“That's a bit unfair.”

“No, it really isn't.”

“Yeah, you're right, it is odd.” She paused and turned her focus to the baby for a few seconds as an excuse to avoid Sherlock's eye. “He's been different since Christmas.” She glanced at him for a moment. “He's never told me what happened. Not in any detail.”

Sherlock was taken aback; he'd never dreamt that John wouldn't have told Mary about it, in all the gory details. “Do you want to know?”

She paused again and fiddled with the baby's blankets. “Sometimes. If it's having this much effect on John I should know. But most of the time I don't. The details don't matter. What matters is that it happened, and I'm so grateful—” For a moment Sherlock thought she was going to cry and wondered if he was going to need an exit strategy, but she pulled herself back from the brink and gave him a thin smile before turning back to the baby. “But I don't understand why John's reacting the way he did. He was a soldier, for heaven's sake.”

“My thoughts entirely. But—”

When he didn't continue, Mary turned her full attention to him. “But?”

Sherlock wondered if he should confide in her fully. While he cared for Mary, he didn't really understand her relationship with John. What they appeared to have together was something so alien to him he sometimes forgot it was fundamentally different from his relationships with John and her. The strengths, tensions, reciprocities and fault-lines of these relationships were unalike. And he kept his vow to them on the edge of his mind at all times; he would say _nothing_ that might negatively affect her marriage. 

He cleared his throat. “John is a romantic.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“About everything.”

“Most things.”

“Yes. Most things. Sometimes he doesn't—” Sherlock annoyed himself stumbling over his words. He knew what he wanted to say; why was he having so much difficulty articulating it? “He can be idealistic.”

“Yes.”

“And a bit. Binary. In his thinking.”

Her expression changed to wary, but not resistant, so Sherlock crept a bit further along the path to his point. “I don't believe he's really understood the nature of my work,” he finally finished.

“I think the days when he thought you were just a posh nutter playing detective are long over.”

“Not so long as you might think.”

She paused for a few seconds. “You're sure? I don't think so. I mean, he's not the most observant fellow in the world, but even he's noticed—”

“It's the only explanation I can think of for his behaviour.”

Mary looked sceptical as she jiggled the baby's carrier as it began to fuss a little. “Maybe. You're probably partly right. But this little one.” She smiled down into the carrier. “She's changed everything. In his mind, anyway.”

Sherlock held his tongue in regards to what he thought John's long-term prospects were for engrossed parenthood. “He does seem besotted.”

Mary grinned at him. “One day. If you're _really_ lucky, you might get to know what it feels like.”

Sherlock cringed. “I think not.”

She laughed. “You sounded _exactly_ like Mycroft, there.”

“Take that back.”

“It would be a lie.”

“I insist. No, I _demand_ you retract that ridiculous slander.”

Mary was still laughing when the door to the flat opened and John arrived home, to all appearances knackered from a long shift at the clinic. “What's so funny?”

“Your wife is slandering me, John. Make her stop.”

“What makes you think she listens to me?” He glanced between the two of them, then kissed the top of Mary's head.

“It's not slander if it's the truth,” Mary chortled as she rose to get John's dinner.

John immediately dropped into her chair. “What was that all about?” Without waiting for Sherlock's reply, John began making strange cooing and chortling noises at the baby, while he poked under the edge of the blankets. To Sherlock, this sudden transformation was surreal and he had the immediate impulse to get away from this unrecognisable and disturbing simulacrum of his friend as soon as possible.

When Mary reappeared, she looked at Sherlock and appeared to read his discomfort, despite his best efforts to hide it. For once it didn't bother him. “When did you say you were meeting Greg?”

Sherlock glanced at the kitchen clock, hiding his relief and mentally raining benedictions on the woman's head for the lie. “Ten minutes ago. I'm surprised he hasn't called.” He was on his feet before John managed to look up. “Must dash.”

“Sherlock,” John protested as Sherlock grabbed his coat. “I just got home.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you should have got home earlier.” With a wave to Mary, he was out the door and down the stairs as if there were hounds at his heels.

~ + ~

**Friday, February 20**

When he arrived at Doctor Deborah’s house, Sherlock was surprised to find her standing on the path that led to the front door. She seemed surprised to see him, as if she’d been expecting him not to come. He thought that was a reasonable assumption, considering he'd walked out on her the previous week. There was no greeting when he appeared; she just turned and led the way around the house. Instead of entering her basement office, she headed into the rear garden.

Sitting on the retaining wall near the steps up to the conservatory, she pulled out her cigarettes and lit one before holding out the pack to Sherlock. As they smoked, they stared across the yard to the row of chestnut trees at the far end of the garden, the only sound the rattling of their bare branches in the wind and the occasional exhale. For once, the peace and quiet wasn't irritating, so he allowed himself to enjoy it as he knew it wouldn’t last.

“I hear you’ve been keeping yourself busy,” she eventually said, and her tone stated she wasn’t expecting an answer.

“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t think it would be productive to talk about his various failed efforts to track down sources of information about Moriarty. He knew that Deborah’s response to him contacting Christina Martin would likely be little different from Mycroft’s, though he imagined the language would at least be more entertaining. But Sherlock wasn’t in the mood to deal with any of it, so he didn't take the bait.

Her response was one of her small, knowing smiles. But to his surprise, she didn’t pursue the matter until they’d finished their cigarettes and were settled in her office.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” she eventually said.

“So don’t. I take it from our previous charade that my watchers have listening posts outside your house.”

She folded her hands in her lap and for a moment looked very tired, before recovering her usual expression of rueful bemusement. “Can’t help myself. And yes, I’ve always thought it safest to assume that was the case.”

“Did you know there was an epidemic of runaway teenagers in London in the 1970s?”

Sherlock couldn’t tell if it was the dramatic change of subject that resulted in the frozen, startled look on her face, or that he’d fired a bolt blindly into the dark and it had somehow managed to find a target.

“I’m agog to hear how that statement is related to what we’re supposed to be talking about.”

“Two of the cold cases I’ve been working on involve teenaged girls who disappeared in London in 1971. Strange coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Does your Met friend have a particular interest in disappearing girls?”

Sherlock paused, wondering if there was some sort of poorly hidden ulterior motive behind her question, but on second thought, didn’t think so. “I doubt it. One of the cases was a murder-suicide, mother and son, and the missing girl was the mother’s younger sister. The other was a case about a girl who disappeared when she was visiting from Leeds.”

Deborah’s twirling of her cigarette lighter stopped for a moment, before resuming. She made a thoughtful sound as she did so, staring at her hands. “You think the cases might be connected?”

“There’s no data to indicate they might be. As Lestrade said: it was the 1970s. Lots of teenagers were running away to London, escaping their families. I can see the attraction.”

Deborah chuckled, still avoiding his eyes. “I’ll bet you do.” She paused for a minutes or so, apparently lost in her own thoughts. Sherlock wondered if he’d managed to put her off the scent long enough for him to escape back to London without her bringing up the Moriarty case again. “Is your friend helping you?”

“Which one?”

“You have more than one friend?” 

She’d taken them back to their more familiar banter, which Sherlock found a relief and he told her so by giving her a mock glare and a disdainful huff. “No, John isn’t working with me right now. He’s busy, apparently.”

“Ah, yes, the baby. They’re time-consuming. Or so I’ve heard.”

“I’ve managed to develop a filter for all baby-related conversation. Very effective. Especially with my landlady, though I’ve had filters for her for years.”

“Does it bother you he’s not working with you?”

“Not ‘psychiatry’ again. Haven’t you got enough on your mind right now without descending into bad habits?”

“Oh, you want to talk about bad habits?”

“Not mine.” Sherlock settled back into his chair. “Yours might be moderately diverting, though. Please feel free.”

She laughed. “I’m too old for bad habits. Other than smoking, intellectual laziness and crap telly, Maris has pretty much ‘cured’ me of them by now. Which is a pity; I was rather fond of my old bad habits.” She shrugged. “Though if she hadn’t I’d probably be dead by now.”

“My brother says we’re defined by our bad habits.”

“God, I hope not. You better hope not, too.”

“There’s nothing in the least bit wrong with my bad habits.”

She shot him a withering look that he deflected with a smirk. “It’s a good thing I’m not really your psychiatrist. I’d have to box your ears for that statement.”

“It would be amusing to see you try.”

“I’m pretty nimble for a wrinkly, you know.”

“So, only _intellectually_ lazy, then.”

“As long as I don’t have to get out of bed before nine or run anywhere, I manage to get by.”

“You have to chase a lot of people in your line of work?”

“If I did, I’d find another one.”

“Yes, the smoking can have that affect.”

“And a bad knee.”

“Occupational injury?”

She scowled. “I fell off a horse. Absolutely buggered it. Second date with Maris.” Sherlock laughed. “Shut up. Short people shouldn’t be badgered into getting onto massive neurotic beasts with brains the size of peanuts; our legs aren’t long enough to hang on. Though she did feel rather guilty. After she stopped laughing her arse off.”

“And you played that for all it was worth.”

“Damned right I did. Got myself a half-decent wife for my troubles.”

“I'm sure she'd be thrilled you refer to her as 'half-decent'.”

“She calls me worse.” At his reaction she added, “We have a complicated relationship.”

“Which I have no interest in learning more about.”

“Fair enough. So, you're not taking clients right now?”

He paused for a moment as he wondered about the change in topic. “I did give it some thought. After Christmas. Now, it seems superfluous. And nothing very interesting has come my way. People are being boring, everywhere I look.”

“Oh, poor you.” She paused and they left each other to their thoughts. Sherlock calculated he had about another fifteen or twenty minutes before he could make his escape without drawing comment. “So, what's your plan?” Deborah eventually continued.

He started, annoyed at himself for letting her drag the conversation back to this subject. “I don't know. As far as I can tell I've exhausted all the possibilities available to me.” He gave her a scowl, which she deflected with an insidious little smirk. “So until he makes another move, there's nothing for me to do on that score.”

“You do already have a lot of data.”

“Which is inconclusive, often contradictory, and leads to dead ends.”

“Perhaps you should spend less time on your friend's cold cases and attend to your actual job.”

“Attend to what? There is no more data. And I need to stay occupied.”

“Of course. Old bad habits.”

“Doctor—”

“I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a concern.”

“So give me the data I need, then. There you go, the solution to _all_ our problems.”

“I told you, I don't have—” 

“Then get it! Damn it, what use are you to me, then?” Sherlock was on his feet now, hands planted on her desk, leaning over it to her still-impassive face. “You've given up, haven't you? Both our lives are at stake and you _sit_ there, waiting for failure to arrive and take you away. You told me weeks ago you wanted me to come out of this alive. That you didn't want Blythe to win. Well, then, bloody well _do something about it_! Stop sitting there waiting for me to save you, Doctor. And if you _won't_ help me, then you don't get to criticise my methods.”

Without waiting for her reply, he stomped out of her office and off to find himself a cab to the station.

On the train back to London, once the glorious, cathartic rage had receded, Sherlock realised he'd forgotten to ask the woman about how common her name was. And he wondered again just how many teenaged Deborah Oppenheimers there had been in London in 1971.

~ + ~


	8. You can never type properly when high so I know it's not drugs talking

**Saturday, February 21**

“You did what?”

“I asked my friends if they remembered anything about him. Why? Shouldn’t I have?”

Sherlock stared across the kitchen table at Molly. He wasn't quite sure what to think of this transformation from “I don't want to talk about him” to conducting an exhaustive survey of her friends for their opinions of her dead psychopathic ex-boyfriend. “Do you make a habit of endangering your friends? If so, please leave me off your Christmas card list from now on.”

“What?” she asked, aghast. “I never thought— I mean, who would they be in danger from? He's dead. Isn't he?”

“Yes, well. Someone out there is desperate to make people think he's still alive.”

They swapped dismayed looks; eventually Molly’s gaze slid across to the lit blowtorch in Sherlock's right hand. He released the valve and the flame shut off. 

“You said you needed more information.” 

Sherlock was surprised by her tone which, coming from anyone else, he’d have interpreted as almost churlish. He thought that a bit unfair, as he hadn’t asked her to start haring off after data for him. “What did they say that you thought I needed to know?”

“How—? Oh, of course.” She perched on one of the kitchen chairs, still keeping one eye on the blowtorch. “My friend Dan, he met him, um, Jim, three times. I think.” There was a rosy tide rising across her cheeks and Sherlock thought he knew who Molly’s next attempted conquest would be. “He was really helpful. He said they talked about America.”

Sherlock’s attention shifted from the glass slide he was examining. He kept his voice as neutral as possible. “America?”

“Yeah. He told me they, um. Dan had just come back from South Carolina and they talked about it a bit, supposedly. He told me he’d thought then maybe he, um, Jim, had been there before.”

“South Carolina.”

“And Florida, he said.” Molly paused. “Is that any help?”

Sherlock sank down onto a chair and carefully placed the blowtorch on the table, struggling to continue to pay attention to her as his thoughts started chasing each other like puppies on their first trip to the dog park. “Perhaps.” He sensed his vision starting to grey out at the edges, presaging the descent into his core processing centres. For Molly’s sake, he resisted the pull of it; he knew a sudden “disappearance” would upset her and he didn't want that. God only knew what other Golden Tickets Molly Hooper unknowingly had stashed in that brain of hers.

“Sherlock, are you okay?”

He shook his head to avert the lure of the new data. “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You looked a bit out of it for a minute. Are you eating properly?”

He scowled at her and she gave him a mock scowl back. “I’m fine. I thought at least _you_ would have resisted my brother’s demands you sign up to his surveillance squad.”

Molly blanched, probably at the thought of having a conversation with Mycroft, a man she’d once admitted she’d feared on first sight, a fear never conquered since. She must have noticed she'd done it as she grimaced, then pulled herself together, all in a moment. “I spoke to everyone I could remember who'd met him and no one else remembered anything useful.”

“Molly—”

“I know, I know. But they didn't tell me anything you don't know already. Did you really want to know my friend Gemma thought he was the creepiest person she'd ever met? Or that Dom thought he was cute but weirdly obsessed with you?”

“Point taken.”

“Yeah, Dom's always had terrible taste in men.”

Sherlock laughed. “No wonder you’re friends; you share an attraction to psychopaths.”

“Very funny. And you're not a psychopath.”

“High functioning sociopath.”

She huffed a little under her breath. “I’m calling time on that expression.”

Sherlock gave her his most brilliant fake smile as he re-lit his blowtorch. “You're sure?”

She giggled back at him as she stood. “Should I call the fire brigade now, so you can get in the queue?”

He waved towards the door with the blowtorch. “Begone with you.”

She ambled across the flat, turning back to him just before she left. “Are you going to be working on new cases soon? It's just, I haven't seen you at Bart's for ages.”

“Perhaps.” He pulled his safety goggles on. “Lestrade needs to get his flunkies to work with me.”

“I met the new DI. Nathalie Elliot. She's nice. A bit scary. I mean, not scary-scary. But she's really clever.”

“Makes a change from Lestrade, then,” Sherlock muttered. 

“What? Sally says she's really ambitious. That's probably why she won't work with you. That's what Sally said, anyway.”

Sherlock looked up at her, and watched her fidgeting with her scarf for a second. “Donovan must think she's died and gone to heaven at the prospect of never again having me show her how to do her job.” 

“Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced and Sherlock wondered what poisons Donovan had been dripping in her ear in his absence. 

“Well, I'm off then. Come by the lab for a visit some time; it doesn't have to be for a case.”

Sherlock made a non-committal sound and a vague wave in her direction as he returned to his work.

When he next looked up, he could tell hours had passed; the weak afternoon sunlight had disappeared, leaving the rest of the flat in darkness. As the evening progressed, he paused occasionally as a thought floated to the surface of his mind, about Moriarty and America. About Moriarty _in_ America, and the implications this had for his future work on the case.

A part of his mind railed at Mycroft for not telling him, while the rest shrugged and said, “it’s Mycroft; what do you expect”. There would be a reason, of course, for why his brother hadn’t bothered to share that information with him. For there was no possibility that the man’s bevy of researcher minions hadn’t found this out when completing their profile of Moriarty all those years ago, back when he had just been one of Mycroft’s many rats, long before Sherlock had even heard of him.

He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help but be curious as to why Mycroft had never told him about Moriarty’s connection to America. It was understandable why he hadn’t told Sherlock now; it had been obvious for weeks that he’d been ordered to stay away. But before, when they’d been planning Sherlock’s move against Moriarty’s organisation, Mycroft should have told him then. All their plans had been hobbled from the outset and he wondered why Mycroft had deliberately allowed Moriarty's American associates to go free.

Politics, he realised after a moment. It would be about politicians and powerful businessmen and others under Mycroft's protection, as Magnussen had been. With a rising tide of disgust, Sherlock observed the pieces fall into place in his mind. Mycroft had sent him after the riff-raff in Moriarty's organisation: the smugglers, the bomb-makers, the low-level intelligence-gatherers. But the top people, they were allowed to go free because they were “too important” to the nation's trade relations, or to the balance of power, or securing oil supplies in the Middle East, or some such nonsense. It was the only possible explanation, based on the data available and what he knew of his brother.

Sherlock knew it would be of no profit to him at all to pursue the matter; Mycroft would refuse to answer. Or lie, or twist the tale to somehow make it Sherlock’s fault that he hadn’t told him. So with a heavy heart he turned his attention back to his experiment, in the back of his mind wondering if MI5 knew that Mycroft had been holding out on them, as well.

~ + ~

**Sunday, February 22**

In the end, it was an accident that revealed the identity of Sherlock's Instagram stalker.

Sherlock _hated_ accidents; they were entirely too random for his taste and never left one with a sense of satisfaction in the resolution. But this one he was willing to not begrudge the universe, as it allowed him to cast off an irritant and enact vengeance he hadn't even realised he'd wanted.

A few weeks previous, Sherlock had begun taking long walks across the city again in an attempt to clear his head, fill a few hours each day, and escape Mrs Hudson's persistent “just stopping by”. As he headed north on his return to Baker Street that afternoon, he sensed his stalker was back. He stuck to the back alleys and narrow, broken old streets of Piccadilly, aiming to take a shortcut to Regent Street. The sense he'd had for the last twenty minutes of being closely observed was not a sequence of individuals, he reasoned, but one person following him through central London.

He turned into Piccadilly Place, then after coming out into the dark, alley-like remains of Vine Street, ducked quickly into Man in the Moon Passage and waited. Whoever was tracking him was obviously canny, as they didn't immediately follow, knowing Sherlock could be doing exactly what he was: hiding just inside the narrow tunnel to catch them coming around the corner. Sherlock imagined he could hear their breath, a little short from trying to keep up with him, and hear their heart rate elevated from the excitement of the chase through Soho.

He leant a little closer to the walkway's opening, straining to hear over the sound of delivery vehicles in Vine Street. Just as he sidled up he heard a short, definitely female, shriek. An answering curse was the only warning Sherlock had before a cyclist barrelled past, missing him by a centimetre, before disappearing towards Regent Street.

Sherlock looked at the pavement and saw drab clothes, a tweed cap, and a familiar splash of bright red hair. “You really don't know when to quit, do you, Miss Riley?”

The creature who'd tried to destroy his life and had been thrown into the gutter in payment for her ambition-fuelled stupidity and naiveté scrambled to her feet, brushing herself off as she stepped back from Sherlock. She obviously was expecting some sort of physical attack. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her phone on the ground, and just managed to beat her to it. The phone, of course, was locked.

“Give me that, it's mine.”

He tapped his chin with the phone as he gave her a contemplative look. “I wonder how long it would take me to crack your password. I'm quite good at that sort of thing, you know. Not being an _actual_ fraud.”

“That still hurts, does it?” She scowled at him. “I don't know why you bother. You won.”

He held up the phone. “Would you like to time me? Shall we go by time or number of attempts?”

She held out her hand, a hard expression on her face. While Sherlock despised her, he had to admit, she possessed an admirable persistence. “You've got four chances out of millions of possible combinations.”

“Ten thousand, actually.”

“You're assuming numbers only, Sherlock. And four digits. You're getting sloppy.”

He gave her a dismissive look, and dug back into his memories. When his hard drive recovered the data he sought, he entered the digits. His first attempt was incorrect; it had been an obvious choice, but sometimes it didn't pay to over-estimate the intelligence of people. After his second attempt a smile crossed his face, and he turned the phone towards her. “The day you lost your job for lying about me. I'm touched. Almost.” He turned away as he began to scroll through her photos.

“That's theft, Sherlock. You want that on your record, too?”

“And this is harassment.” He held up the phone to show her he'd found the photos she'd taken of him earlier in the day. “I'm sure it will be easy to confirm the rest of them were taken with this phone. Metadata. Your best friend and your worst enemy. Well, in your case, second worst.”

“The police won't do a thing; it isn't a crime to take pictures in public.”

“Who said anything about the police?” He stuck his hands in his pockets, turned on a heel and continued on his way, secure in the knowledge that once he was home and posted the identity of his stalker on his web site and Twitter, Kitty Riley would be wishing he had turned her over to the Met instead of to the infinitely rougher justice of social media and the fans who'd been wanting her blood for years.

~ + ~

**Monday, February 23**

“Vengeance is sweet, isn't it?” Mary hadn't even bothered with a greeting or opening chitchat when she appeared at the door of his flat. 

“Perhaps. Though vengeance wasn't my principal motivation.”

She chuckled and placed the baby carrier on the sofa. “Oh, come on. That woman tried to build a career on the blackened bones of your life. A _little_ schadenfreude is understandable.”

“Yes. A bit, I suppose.” Sherlock knew Mary would see through his entirely false diffidence, so didn't refrain from laying it on a bit. “One less annoyance to clog up the machinery.”

Mary pulled out her phone and scrolled through something on the screen for a few seconds. “People are really gunning for her. Even more than before.”

“Good. It'll teach her to be more careful next time someone brings her a story that's too good to be true, then harassing the person who proves her wrong.”

“I don't imagine there'll be a next time for her. If she's too toxic for even _The Mail_ to pick up, I can't imagine anyone else would take her on.”

“ _The Mirror_ , perhaps. Especially if she claims she has some dirt on _The Sun_ 's operations. The only thing the gutter press likes more than destroying people is trying to destroy each other.”

“Maybe.” Mary lifted the fussing Grace out of her carrier, watching Sherlock's reaction. “You always have the strangest expression on your face when you look at her.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Oh, that doesn't surprise me at all.” She looked down at her daughter, who she'd laid down next to her on the sofa, and tickled the baby's side under the edge of her tiny fleece shirt. “If I didn't know better, I'd say you were afraid of her.”

Sherlock picked up his violin and began to absently pick at the strings for a few seconds before answering. “Why would I be afraid of an infant? She's no—” He paused. “I have no interest in babies. Or children. Until they're capable of rational conversation, which, now I think of it, rules out most adults, as well. So, your theory's fatally flawed, based on incomplete data—”

“She's not going anywhere, Sherlock.” Mary appeared to be entirely unconvinced, or was refusing to be convinced. “You're going to have to cope with this if you want John around at all.”

“I have no idea to what you're referring.” Sherlock winced internally at his peevish tone, entirely unlike the bored disdain he'd been going for.

“Yes, you do. I know you're not really that childish.” She paused for a few seconds and fussed a bit with the baby's clothes in order to avoid looking at Sherlock, which he knew was a bad sign for the conversation ending any time soon or moving on to a less distressing subject matter. “This is our life now. And if you force John to choose, you have to know you can't win.” She glanced over to him for a moment. “Because this little one, she owns his heart now.”

Sherlock thought he detected a hint of wistfulness in her tone and wondered if Mary was feeling cast aside, as well. He didn't know what to think of that possibility, that John—a man he'd thought so steadfast, so dependable—could be so fickle in his affections. Nor did Sherlock know how to respond to Mary; if he tried to placate her, he acknowledged that he had deduced her fears, which would be interpreted as an attack on John's character, which she would feel compelled to defend.

As often happened when dealing with non-Holmeses, Sherlock felt somewhat out of his depth. Mary met his gaze and with a small half-shrug ended that branch of the conversation, acknowledging that there was nothing either of them could do other than wait and hold on, and hope that the storm passed before the situation deteriorated further.

Sherlock watched, in equal measure horrified and fascinated, as Mary changed the baby's nappy. He tried to imagine his mother doing the same to him or Mycroft and simply could not conjure the mental image. While he didn't remember having had one, his parents must have employed a nurse. The idea of his mother changing nappies was beyond the realm of possibility. He should ask Mycroft; his brother regularly mined Sherlock's infancy for ammunition in the war of attrition that was their relationship, so would recall if their parents had employed a nurse.

He was wasting time on such maunderings, he knew; now that he had Mary at Baker Street he should take the opportunity to pick her brain again.

“Did you know the CIA was trying to bring Mycroft down?” Well, that had not been the approach he'd meant to take, he thought the moment the words left his mouth.

Mary stared across the room at him, dirty nappy in one hand, the other resting on Grace's bare stomach. “What?”

Sherlock gave an embarrassed little hum. “I suppose I could have worked up to that a bit.”

“Why would the CIA want to take Mycroft down? I thought they were as thick as thieves.”

“What happened with Magnussen. And before. Another case we worked on a few years ago.”

“The Adler woman.”

“John told you about her?”

Mary nodded, then turned her attention back to the baby. “She sounds like a real prize.” Sherlock snorted but didn't interrupt as Mary continued. “John said he thought you might be in love with her.”

“Hell would freeze over first.” He hadn't meant his response to be so vehement, as he knew she'd misinterpret it. He wanted to clarify, in great detail, why _exactly_ he could never have tender feelings for Irene Adler, but he knew the longer he spoke about her the more Mary would convince herself of the falseness of his protests. So he resisted the temptation and kept his mouth shut as Mary's expression shifted from amusement back to sadness. Sherlock had never before imagined that Mary shared John's romanticism, but her reaction told him he'd been wrong in that regard, as well.

“Of course, I could be wrong about the CIA,” Sherlock mused in an attempt to head off any further discussion about his supposed romantic interests. “Though my source is fairly reliable, and has no known reason to lie about it.”

“Who do you know that has access to that kind of intelligence? Other than Mycroft.”

Sherlock paused; he realised it was probably not a good idea to share too much information about that aspect of his work with Mary. She seemed to understand the cause of his sudden reticence and steered the conversation away, to his relief. “I don't think the CIA's after him, to be honest.”

“Why?”

“If they were he'd be dead already.” She gave him another rueful shrug. “Or disappeared.”

“More likely the latter.”

“Probably.” She finished re-dressing the baby and dandled her in front of her face, making more of the coo-ing sounds that set Sherlock's teeth on edge. She lay the baby on her lap and continued the tickling offensive as she continued. “That doesn't mean they're not hovering in the background, waiting to take advantage of what's going on.”

“Well, yes. They are the CIA; hovering vultures is what they do so well.”

“Among other things.”

They both paused and Sherlock watched Mary tuck the baby back into her carrier.

“How are the cold cases going?”

Sherlock sighed internally. They'd moved on to banalities. “Fine. Two down, two to go.”

“Did you solve that one about the girl? The one that disappeared.”

“Not yet.”

“Are you waiting for John to work with you on it?”

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow in acknowledgement of her deduction. “I had been.”

“I don't think I'd bother if I were you.”

“Oh.” Sherlock picked up his bow and trimmed the two broken hairs he found.

“I'd better be off. I want to see Mrs Hudson before I go and I'm meeting Molly for lunch.”

Sherlock gave her a wave with his bow and picked up his violin again. Fifteen minutes later he saw her exit the front door and head down the street. He also noticed a man standing on the pavement, ostensibly engrossed in a phone call, take note of her as she walked away.

~ + ~

**Tuesday, February 24**

There were times in his life when Sherlock wondered if he was possessed by a self-destructive demon. Looked at through the prism of pure logic, the storyline of his life would indicate there was a fair possibility of that being the case. The drugs, of course. Were they really a better alternative than boredom? His inability to cope with humanity in general, except at arm's length, with a few notable exceptions. He'd often wondered how much of it was due to biology and brain chemistry, and how much to incompetent parenting. He couldn't even maintain a functional relationship with his brother, the one person in his life that could truly be called his peer, and the one person who he grudgingly admitted understood him to some degree. Sherlock complained that the world was full of idiots, but the one truly non-idiotic person he knew drove him mad on a regular basis, and the very thought of him compelled Sherlock to the most ridiculous stunts, which in hindsight often seemed purposely designed to infuriate the man.

So Sherlock was not surprised to find himself in Richmond, bent on a course of action which would likely send his brother into some sort of spasm. He took the last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt into a nearby puddle before ascending the short flight of steps to the front door of the National Archives building.

The receptionist recognised him with a smile, but seemed a little cagey when he asked to see Christina Martin. Sherlock wondered if the receptionist had been warned about him coming, then shook off the idea as the young woman called through to Christina's office. There was no reply and after toying with her computer for a minute, the receptionist informed him that Christina was in a meeting. Sherlock said he'd wait. The woman's hesitation told him all he needed to know: Mycroft's shield around Christina extended to her place of work. Though after a minute he grudgingly admitted to himself that it might have been intended to keep away the more ghoulish elements of the press, looking for a follow-up story about the attack on her daughter.

The young woman at the desk informed him that she had sent Christina an email to let her know that Sherlock was waiting for her; he could tell by the guilty look on her face that she was a poor and unpracticed liar. But in her defence, he admitted it was unlikely that her moderate salary would pay for the kind of skills necessary to deal with Mycroft and his people with any kind of aplomb.

Which, a glance out the window fifteen minutes later told him she'd been required to do.

Sherlock recognised one of the men. Obviously one of his brother's more trusted minions, the man had dragged Sherlock to the Palace and to Heathrow all those years ago, during the case that had brought The Woman into their lives. The man had seemed competent, and Sherlock wondered why he hadn't managed a promotion from flunky in the intervening years. Based on the evidence of where Mycroft's odd PA lived, Sherlock suspected his brother was cheap as well as an overbearing bore, so there must be some reason unknown to Sherlock why the man chose to remain in the job.

“Still picking up my brother's cleaning?” Sherlock asked in greeting as the two men walked in the door. The question elicited nothing but the tiniest eyebrow quirk and a slight thickening of the atmosphere for a moment. Sherlock wondered why the other man was armed; was Mycroft expecting Sherlock to resist? Or was it for protection? And if so, whose?

His escort still had the same tones of weary resignation as he requested that Sherlock come with him. Sherlock wondered if the man truly _was_ done with running Mycroft's minor errands. Sherlock wanted to refuse but the look on the receptionist's face—the brief flicker of fear—disgusted him, so he left without even a token protest; he'd save his bile for his brother.

The drive back into London was mercifully silent. Sherlock didn't bother with questions or extemporising this time. He knew the conversation couldn't start until he was with Mycroft.

To his surprise, they kept travelling north until they were driving up Baker Street. They then deposited him in front of his own door, like a vaguely malevolent car service. There wasn't even a parting message as he clambered out the back of the vehicle; the moment he closed the door, the car roared up the street.

As Sherlock stood on the pavement, deciding whether or not to flout good sense again that morning and have a cigarette before going in, Mrs Hudson stepped out the door, her shopping bags in one hand.

“You're out and about early this morning.”

“I had an errand,” he muttered as he pulled his phone out of his pocket in anticipation of the inevitable call from Mycroft.

“I'm off, then.”

“Don't forget the Hobnobs,” he called after her as he watched his phone for a few seconds, then dropped it back into his pocket. Mycroft was losing his touch. Or there was some sort of crisis keeping him from administering the bollocking to his wayward brother that Sherlock was expecting in response to his refusal to obey a direct order.

Sherlock spent the rest of the day going over the Carol Evans file in an attempt to distract himself from the sense of disappointment in having failed once again in the matter of Moriarty. As the day rolled into evening, Sherlock found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the case in front of him. There'd been no word from Mycroft, which likely meant he was planning one of his visits. That or he was just in one of his more manipulative moods, making Sherlock wait in anticipation for the scolding he knew would come eventually. Mycroft would expect him to fret over it, though he really couldn't be bothered. Unless, of course, whatever had kept the man away all day was serious enough that Mycroft was forced to deny himself the pleasure of raining his judgements and proclamations down on his brother. 

Sherlock wanted him to just appear or call, and get it over with. But the recriminations he spent most of the day anticipating never arrived. By midnight Sherlock started to worry. A very little. Then chastised himself for an idiot and went to bed. The forefront of his mind congratulated himself for having escaped a tiresome harangue; the background of his mind couldn't help but speculate on the possible reasons why. And remember Doctor Deborah's words about falls, and how their effects could be more wide-spread than originally anticipated.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, February 25**

_You home?  
DCI Greg Lestrade_

_Yes, why?  
SH _

_Info on a cold case.  
GL_

_Can't you just text?  
SH_

There was a pause of a minute or so and Sherlock knew it was due to the man calculating the time involved in texting rather than just coming to Baker Street. Perhaps he was trapped in one of his “strategic operational planning” meetings or some other middle management circle of hell that Lestrade had acquired in exchange for giving up real police work.

_Deborah Oppenheimer case closed 1977.  
GL_

_Dead or alive?  
SH_

_Alive. Student @ King's College. DI found her while wkg another case.  
GL_

_Not related to Carol Evans case then.  
SH_

_Apparently not. Sorry for losing you your serial killer. Know how much you like those.  
GL_

_V funny. Did they find why she ran away?  
SH_

_Probably. Nothing in file. Not surprising.  
GL_

_Always seemed a straightforward runaway case. Glad to be right.  
GL_

Sherlock stared at the last words of Lestrade's text and forced himself to resist the siren call of old habits. Then he grimaced at the memory of Mycroft's voice saying those exact words.

_Thank you for letting me know.  
SH_

_Who are you and what have you done w Sherlock?  
GL_

Sherlock tamped down the urge to send the man a rude emoji in reply. 

_A new improved Sherlock Holmes noted for his graciousness.  
SH_

_Very funny. You can never type properly when high so I know it's not drugs talking.  
GL_

_Deeply offended L-I'm clean as an abbess' wimple.  
SH_

_Good, keep it that way. Talk soon.  
GL_

_I'm sure you will.  
SH_

_That's my boy :D  
GL_

_Ha ha.  
SH_

Sherlock stared up at the ceiling and resumed strumming his violin like a tiny guitar as it lay on his chest. A minute later he picked up his phone from the table.

_What did Oppenheimer study @ King's?  
SH_

Seven tense minutes later, Lestrade's reply arrived: 

_Medicine._

So, Deborah Oppenheimer _could_ be his Deborah Oppenheimer. He was going to have to start referring to them by number if he wanted to keep them straight. Sherlock forced himself to take a deep breath and clear the clutter in his mind. 

Of course, the easiest way to sort it all out was to ask Doctor Deborah where she'd completed her medical training and when. Had she already given him the data he needed, he wondered as he lay in the gathering dusk. He allowed his mind to case back over all their conversations to date, searching for any clues she might have inadvertently given about her background or education. After thirty minutes' scrutiny of his memories he'd come up with nothing of any substance. And he knew that even if she'd said anything he couldn't know if it was true or not.

To his chagrin, he eventually admitted to himself that he was going to have to get the information from her. Sherlock wondered why he cared. There was no case to solve. Even if the two Deborah Oppenheimers were the same person, this fact wouldn't change anything; it meant nothing to him one way or another. It had no bearing on the Carol Evans case, the Moriarty case, or any other case that Sherlock could imagine. So why did he care?

Because Sherlock knew he couldn't leave well enough alone. His mind would never disengage from any matter until it had the answer; it could never leave any question of fact unresolved. And Sherlock knew he had to keep working, on anything, to stave off the dangers that boredom brought, and to subvert the frustrations and failures that were threatening to swamp the Moriarty case and send them all under for good.

~ + ~

**Thursday, February 26**

Sherlock allowed himself to indulge in a feeling of exasperation at the loss of his second “missing girl” case. The original one, Carol Evans from Leeds, had lost a bit of its shine now that it was obvious the case wasn’t enough to draw John’s interest. And Sherlock couldn’t help being annoyed at Lestrade for raising his hopes for a possible serial killer, only for them to be dashed by the reality of Deborah Oppenheimer’s continuing existence. In the back of his mind he still played with the idea of the two women of that name being the same person, but knew the likelihood to be small. If _Mycroft_ had brought him the case, Sherlock would know that there was some deep-buried secret behind the seemingly innocuous reference to Mrs Klein’s missing sister, but Sherlock knew that that kind of deception wasn’t in Lestrade’s nature.

So Sherlock continued with the Carol Evans case on his own, ignoring the hovering grief at John’s continued absence. First, he visited the site of the third clue: the Reading Room of the old British Library, mummified within the since-enclosed Great Court of the British Museum. 

The old ground-level entrance to the room was closed off, so Sherlock loped up the wide curving staircase that encircled the exterior of the old library’s cream-coloured stone sarcophagus, up to the second floor viewing room. After a group of tourists vacated the area, he looked down into the dead space and wondered why he’d even bothered to make the trip. There was nothing for him to see. As evidence, the site was useless without people and activity. There was no way to imagine how the murderer brought Carol Evans’ blood-stained shoes into the building and hid them, no way to use the site as a means to projecting himself into the murderer’s mind. No way to see the security gaps, or determine the significance of the site. It was like a murder site _after_ Anderson had been through it. It was nothing now but an artifact of old information systems, stripped of its purpose, a look-but-don’t-touch curiosity. 

Sherlock ignored the eyes that tracked his progress through the claustrophobia-inducing crowds in the Great Court and back out onto the broad plaza in front of the museum. He desperately wanted a cigarette at that moment, but contented himself with scowling at a young Korean couple taking a selfie of themselves with the museum in the background.

In one of his rare concessions to the concept of delayed gratification, Sherlock had known from the beginning of the case that he would be visiting the site of the last clue at the end of his recognizance. With a lightening heart he walked five minutes to the Sir John Soane’s Museum, site of the murderer’s most audacious act.

When Sherlock arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields he was glad not to see a queue to enter the museum; it likely meant the cramped space wouldn't be full, facilitating his snooping around. Once inside he headed straight up to the first floor and the Picture Room, the place he’d insisted they start with on the many childhood visits he’d made to the museum with Mycroft and their father. He’d always loved the cleverness of the layers of folding panels, sensing a kindred spirit behind the design of the place, and the magpie acquisitiveness of the man whose collection the building was designed to house. Sherlock had held this site visit to last as a treat. Though as he reacquainted himself with the grotesquery of Tom Rakewell's fall, he wondered why it had been so long since he’d visited the place.

He stood aside as the attendant folded back the layers of panels at his request; he sensed that this was out of the ordinary. One of the perks of fame, he supposed. Once all the panels were opened, the niche hidden behind them was revealed. Sherlock stepped closer to examine the statue of a nymph that resided there. He stopped after his second step; he sensed the attendant behind him lean over, as if about to restrain him. The polite, unseen, rebuff was palpable, and Sherlock’s admiration for the murderer’s guile and nerve increased. Finding a way to circumvent the room’s security, open the layers of panels, drape Carol Evans’ blood-soaked blouse over the nymph’s shoulders, close all the panels and escape without notice was the work of a master, one with an impish sense of humour that Sherlock found appealing and a little surprising, considering the banality of everything else associated with the case. He amused himself for a few moments with speculation that there might be two murderers. For this was the only one of the clue locations that seemed to say anything about the killer. There was a story behind the choice, and Sherlock wanted to hear it.

Of course, Sherlock had no idea what that story was, but the potential of it was tantalising. As he left the museum, he felt more himself after the disappointment of the British Library. This last clue gave him data. Data he didn’t yet understand, but something for his brain to chew on, just the same, which was more than he could say for the case he was _supposed_ to be working on.

~ + ~

**Friday, February 27**

“Are you planning on shouting at me again, or are we going to have a civilised conversation?”

“About what? We have nothing to discuss.”

Sherlock had spent a good portion of the day periodically changing his mind about whether he would go to Oxford that afternoon. There'd been no response to his outburst the previous week, which almost made him curious to see Doctor Deborah to find out why. And he'd still needed to talk to her about his other Deborah Oppenheimer. In the end, this had been the deciding factor, and half an hour later than he should have, he'd headed for Paddington Station.

Doctor Deborah paused and Sherlock could almost hear what she muttered to herself. It sounded to be in German, but was probably Yiddish.

“When I was in medical school, doing my ward residency, do you know what my _least_ favourite rotation was?”

“Spare me, doctor.”

“Child psychiatry. Are yet, here I am, stuck with you. How old are you?”

Sherlock stood to leave; what a waste of his time. Half a day gone just on the trains.

“Sit down!” Doctor Deborah bellowed at his back. Sherlock stared down at her across the desk, impressed at the surprising volume she's managed to produce from such a small body.

She pointed at the chair. “Sit,” she said at a normal volume, but with no less tone of command. 

“Or what?”

“Or I let you go.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to reply, “About time,” before he caught up to her meaning. _Oh._ He sat.

They stared across the desk at one another like a pair of dogs hesitantly lowering their hackles. She began toying with her lighter, but to Sherlock's surprise didn't suggest they go outside for a smoke. She was obviously not yet ready to make up. “Tell me about your cold cases.”

It was an unexpected olive branch, but Sherlock decided it served his immediate interests to appear to accept it, especially if he wanted to get her in the right frame of mind to answer questions about her past.

“One of them was quite straightforward. Murder-suicide; mother killed her son, then herself.”

A stricken look appeared on Doctor Deborah's face. “That actually sounds like the opposite of straightforward to me. I mean, that's not something you hear about every day, a mother murdering a child. Doesn't happen very often.”

“Oh no, it doesn't. Other than the occasional infanticide by teenagers, it's quite rare. The rarest form of intra-family homicide.” He paused; her expression didn't change. “Ah. I see what you mean. No, I meant solving it was straightforward. Rose Klein was very much of a type: controlling, obsessed with the opinions of other people, determined to do anything to be admired and feared.” Sherlock watched the woman closely for her reaction to the name, but there was none. But then, if she'd been Rose Klein's sister she might not know the woman's married name. 

“The other case is a crime within a family, as well.”

“It sounds like he has issues, this Met friend of yours.”

“Well, if he'd known who the culprits were he wouldn't have needed me to solve them, would he?”

“Good point. So what kind of intra-family violence are we talking about for case number two?” 

Doctor Deborah leant back in her chair and folded her hands across her stomach, a bemused expression on her face. Sherlock suspected she knew he was delaying because he had nothing on the Moriarty case. But she seemed to be willing to play along at the moment, so he didn't question his good luck at her shift in mood.

“Son hires thugs to rob his father's shop; the father unexpectedly interrupts robbery and is murdered by the thugs.”

“Sounds like a Greek tragedy.”

“Well, Alan Robichaud didn't end up married to his mother afterwards, so no.”

Deborah laughed. “No, you're right.” She paused, watching him with a questioning look on her face and Sherlock steeled himself for the inevitable return to Moriarty. “I should get you to walk me through one of your cases one day.”

“Why?”

“I'm curious about your process, how you go about deducing things.”

“Because you're a 'big fan'?” Sherlock wondered if she'd remember her words from their second meeting in December. He didn't know quite how to react to her request, though. Other than John and Lestrade, no one had ever expressed an interest in _how_ he performed his deductions, only in the solutions. And sometimes not even then. “One day, perhaps.”

“When we're done with all this.” She paused again and Sherlock wondered what she knew that made her so certain he would crack it, or if he didn't, not be sent back out on his delayed suicide mission. “And what about the epidemic of missing girls you mentioned last week?” 

Her question caught him off guard; he shifted in his chair and decided to take the question at face value and see where it lead him. “Well, it turns out one of them was later found; the case had been closed for more than thirty years and nobody thought to update the Met's records properly.”

“That sounds like the Met we all know and love.”

“The other case I haven't solved yet. There's something not quite right about it. There's a vital piece of data I haven't managed to get my hands on yet.” He paused and wondered how much he should tell her, though he did question why she was asking for details of this case specifically. In the end, he knew generalities should be safe enough. “With some cases there's a key to the puzzle, one piece of data, usually insignificant on its own, that unlocks the case's secrets. You can gather ninety-nine percent of the data, but you can't see the pattern or understand the significance of the various pieces until you have that one fact.”

“And that's what you're missing?”

“Yes. It's _very frustrating_.”

She laughed. “I imagine so. How did your friend at the Met decide what cases to give you?”

“No idea. But the second one he'd been the DS under another DI. Between you and me, the most incompetent and probably corrupt policeman I've ever encountered.”

“Quite the feat.”

“Not really. Most policemen are just ordinary people. What they lack in imagination and observational skills, they make up for in laziness and venality. Not incompetent based on the low standards of the Met. Thompkins was— I was going to say in a class of his own, but I don't really believe that to be true, unfortunately. Just more than ordinarily negligent.”

“And your friend isn't.”

“I suppose most people would consider him an exemplary officer, other than this fondness for illegally allowing a civilian access to confidential information about current investigations.”

“How did you meet him?”

“He arrested me. How else do people meet policemen?”

“By being victims of crime, I suppose. And the usual ways you meet people: dinner parties. Social events. Nightclubs.”

Sherlock burst out laughing, trying to imagine Lestrade at a nightclub or a dinner party, chatting about the horrors of London property prices or whinging about the difficulty of finding decent nannies. “I think you and I are talking about different types of policemen. Especially if you're swanning about with the Prime Minister and idiots like that.”

“What did he arrest you for? Drugs?”

“Being in possession of the proceeds of a crime, and resisting arrest.”

“Really? Oh, you were trading stolen goods for drugs.”

“Well, I'd been _trying_ to.” They both chuckled. “I didn't think Mycroft would ever miss them.”

“How did you end up working with him? I mean, it's a bit odd, isn't it?”

Sherlock shrugged. “I solved one of his cases on the drive back to the Yard for processing.”

“So this fellow has always been willing to take risks for you?”

Sherlock knew all of a sudden where the conversation was heading. “He takes risks to solve cases. To catch criminals. Do you know how many murderers I've caught for the Met?”

She held up her hands. “Fine, fine. I'm not the Home Secretary; I really don't care, to be honest. Just trying to make conversation.”

“Why?”

“Because that's what we do?”

“I thought we were supposed to be solving this 'Moriarty situation'. But then, you haven't exactly contributed anything to that enterprise, have you, Doctor?”

“You do realise this Met friend of yours is endangering his career by helping you.”

“I never asked him to. And he's not helping me, he's helping MI5 through me, though you'd never get him to admit that. And he knows even less about the Moriarty situation than you do. He's been acting as my butler. Or is it valet? Anyway, he's helped me gather some data, which is more than you've done over the last two months.”

“The title of my job description is 'Handler', not 'Butler'. Nor 'Valet'. And I suspect mostly he's been helping you stay off drugs by giving you cold cases to work on.”

Sherlock sat very still for a few seconds while he waited for her to continue. But she didn't. “Blythe is on to him.”

“Yes, I know.”

Sherlock leapt to his feet and proceeded to pace from one end of the office to the other. “So Lestrade is going down as well. Damn it! I knew Mycroft should never have got him involved.”

“He would have known the risks.”

“Lestrade's no fool. But he's got that bloody, crippling sense of honour that I've always known would get him killed one day.”

“Certain parties at head office are starting to get restless about the lack of progress.” Sherlock sent her a look that had her defensive hands back up again. “I know, I know. But the circle involved in this part of things is pretty small. Either there are some exceptional actors at head office, or the large majority of people involved in running this operation have no idea what's really going on.”

“They think I was brought back to actually solve it.”

“Of course. There's no way to keep this kind of thing secret unless the number in the know is very small. There are _some_ decent people at head office, and if word got out about what's really going on behind the scenes, well, what I _think_ is going on, someone would make sure it got to the top.”

“How small?”

She paused and to Sherlock it seemed as though she were deciding just how far down that path she was willing to go. “Three. Four at most would be my guess.” Seeing his grimace, she added, “Shut up. Guessing is all we have right now.”

“Supposition?” he asked, sarcastically. She only sighed. “Who, besides Blythe?”

“I have one suspect.” She turned to her own thoughts for a few seconds. “I've never met the man so my suspicions are based on hearsay and reputation only.” She paused at Sherlock's sneering huff. “I agree. The others, if there even are any, I don't know and couldn't even guess. I'm just not that connected to things in London. By my choice.” She waited for his response, then shrugged. “Next steps? I'm open to suggestions.”

“We wait. Someone is going to make a mistake. Break cover. And whoever was behind the CCTV footage is due back about now.”

“Yeah, I noticed that a couple of days ago; it's been four weeks, same as the interval between the video and the CCTV footage.” She paused for a few seconds while she toyed with her lighter. “I wonder if your brother knows who at MI5 is involved.”

“Blythe, he will know about. I'd be willing to bet he has good suspects for each of your four.”

“That's an even more frightening thought. That he knows, and is powerless to do anything about it.”

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wondering what Mycroft & his gang were up to this week? [Find out here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/16829623)


	9. Are you still going to call me cold for thinking this clever?

**Sunday, March 1**

“Did they ever figure out who was behind that?”

Sherlock jumped; he hadn't heard Mrs Hudson creep into the flat and come up behind him. Either he was going deaf or she was becoming much sneakier in her old age. “Behind what?” he asked, though he knew what she'd referred to. 

She reached over his shoulder to tap his computer screen on the headline of the article he'd been reading. “That Moriarty nonsense just after New Year. All that fuss for a few days, then poof, nothing.” She ambled into the kitchen and stared at Sherlock's most recent experiment, hands on her hips. To Sherlock's relief she didn't say anything about the new burns on the table.

“Was your brother behind it all?”

“What?” Not only was she sneakier, she'd apparently also developed considerable insights into the operations of British Intelligence since the previous evening, if she thought Mycroft might be behind the Moriarty video.

“The press. He got them to stop reporting about it, didn't he?”

“Oh, that.” Sherlock was almost disappointed. “Probably not. Rupert Murdoch is one of the few people on the planet Mycroft can't bully. And that weasel at _The Mail_ is so stupid he doesn't even know Mycroft runs the country. He thinks Murdoch does. They're all morons.”

“What do you think happened? Was it terrorists? Or just someone playing a bad joke?”

“What makes you think it wasn't terrorists playing a bad joke.” She rolled her eyes at him as he continued. “Actually, I have no idea.” He was becoming bored with the truth behind that statement. Admittedly, he “knew” who it was, but had no hard evidence to even prove the man existed, much less that he was behind the two videos. Sherlock did wonder, though, how the press had managed to not sniff out the existence of the CCTV footage. Obviously very few people even within MI5 knew about it. He amused himself for a moment with the idea that the Home Secretary might not even know, and wondered if he should call her. “It was probably some teenaged hacker.” Sherlock turned back to _The Observer_ article that, in a nutshell, was asking the same questions as Mrs Hudson. Though without the mention of Mycroft, of course.

Sherlock was surprised that the man hadn't suppressed _this_ article, as well. It was a reasonable attempt to analyse why the government had allowed the case to die in the public's imagination. The writer suggested it was largely because the government didn't want anyone questioning how parties unknown had managed to make GCHQ, MI5, the government, and all the broadcasters look like incompetents. Sherlock wondered who Mycroft was trying to embarrass or destabilize by allowing _The Observer_ to get away with pointing out the complete lack of action by the government. And, consequently, in doing so raising Sherlock's danger level by forcing the government and MI5's backs to the wall. Their response was bound to be to finally demand answers from Sherlock, answers that Mycroft must know Sherlock couldn't give them. He doubted they'd be much interested in his theories about ghosts. Perhaps he should tell MI5 that there really _was_ a vault full of Moriarty clones under Baskerville, grown in vats at Mycroft's command.

Sherlock acknowledged that “solution” should probably be held back as a last resort.

He turned his attention back to the article. It was—as usual—calling for some sort of inquiry: why had the hackers been able to take over the nation's broadcast system; why had there been no discernible police response; why had the government released no information at all about efforts to determine who was responsible; why had no information about the investigation been released to the public; what efforts were being made to ensure there would be no repeat?

Sherlock thought the writer should have just called him, because these questions he _could_ answer: they're good; they're idiots; they had none; there hadn't been one; and nothing had been, respectively.

He wondered when the television crews would begin to drift back to Baker Street. Once the other newspapers picked up the story and the national outrage level began to tick up again, the broadcast “press” could usually be relied on to jump onto the bandwagon. Just when Mrs Hudson and Mr Chatterjee had stopped whingeing about the press and stalker fans hovering, it appeared that the circus was about to return.

Sherlock began to reflect on when the screws would begin to tighten. Or would it feel more like a noose, he wondered. He wasn't looking forward to finding out.

~ + ~

**Monday, March 2**

When Sherlock arrived home from his walk around London that afternoon, he was surprised to see John at the flat, and even more surprised to see him alone and leafing through the Carol Evans case file.

“Can't stay away?” Sherlock asked as he hung up his coat.

“Can, actually. Seems to be an interesting case, though.”

“Moderately.” Sherlock dropped into his chair and gave John a questioning look. He was surprised to see him without his new accessory, the first time that had happened since it had been born.

“Yeah, short shift today. Thought I'd drop by, see how you were.”

“I saw you less than a week ago.”

“Week and a half.”

Sherlock gave a brief wave of dismissal.

“Why did you run off when I got home the other night? And if you're going to lie about meeting Greg you should probably let him in on the plan next time.”

“Why do you care?”

John flopped into what had once been his chair. “Because I care about our friendship.”

“Oh. Why?”

John just stared at him for a few seconds, then sighed and picked up the case file he'd been reading. “Tell me about this girl. Carol Evans.”

“Why?”

“Because apparently you think we can only be friends if we're working on cases together. So tell me about Carol Evans. You cracked it yet?”

Sherlock opened his mouth to begin, then shut it. This was not what he'd wanted, this resignation and sense of obligation. Not John tired and defeated sounding. Not them sitting in Baker Street, talking about cases like a pair of pensioners. But if it was all John was willing to give him right now, then Sherlock had to accept it with a bit of graciousness, or John might just retract the offer. So Sherlock drew a deep breath and started.

“Carol Evans. Eighteen years old, had just finished school. She came down to London from Leeds to visit a school friend who'd just moved south. She left the train and was never seen again. At least, the Met weren't able to find any witnesses who had seen her after she'd left King's Cross.

“She arrived in London August 5, 1971. Three days later her parents reported her missing to North Yorkshire Constabulary, who contacted the Met. On August 10th, her handbag was found at the Grace Gates at Lord's. The bag was covered in blood the same type as hers.”

“No DNA tests back then,” John mused. 

As he continued, Sherlock was glad to see the man seemed genuinely interested in the story. “Of course. So other than blood type and the contents, which seemed intact, there was no way to identify it. At this point it becomes a potential murder investigation instead of just a missing person case, so the Met throws some resources at it. But there's no body. The first DI assigned the case, Prewitt, thought they might have a serial killer or a thrill killer. The bag being left in a public place to be found seemed to indicate that.” Sherlock rolled his eyes and John chuckled. “Five days later, the girl's skirt was found, also covered in blood of the same type, at the Imperial War Museum. This time the murderer had upped the drama a bit; he'd draped the skirt over one of the battleship guns installed in front of the building.”

Sherlock paused as John chortled. “Wow. Sorry, go on.”

“By this time, ten days after the girl's disappearance and still without having found a body, Prewitt began to think she might not be dead. That her abductor might be holding her somewhere, injured but alive, as the blood on the skirt seemed to be fresher than would be the case if she'd been killed before the first clue was left. Though it's difficult to tell how he might have come to that conclusion as they didn't have any tests for _that_ either, back then.”

“That must have put them in a panic.”

“To say the least. They assumed the culprit was somewhere in London and a massive hunt began across the city.”

“A bit unusual, wasn't it? I mean, the Met usually is pretty laid-back about missing adults.”

“The press had been having a field day with the case. A nice, middle-class girl snatched in the big city. She was attractive, intelligent and had media-savvy parents who pushed the Met mercilessly through the press. Once the tabloids got their teeth into the story, the Met went into panic mode. And after someone leaked to _The Sun_ that someone leading the investigation thought the girl might still be alive, they redoubled their pressure. The headlines alone were a textbook case of public manipulation. And on the 20th of August, her shoes appeared, in the Reading Room of the old British Library. They were bloody as well, and in this case the blood did seem old enough to have been spilled two weeks before. By this stage, the police were focusing on trying to get a profile of the culprit and assemble a list of possible suspects, rather than simply chasing around London like headless chickens, which they'd wasted at least a week doing.”

“Why that long? Seems a bit—”

“Incompetent. Yes, I know. I saw that consistently across all four cases Lestrade brought me. If the Met stopped hiring morons—”

“You'd be out of a job,” John finished for him with a chuckle.

“Well, yes.” Sherlock's thin smile was answered by John's grin, then Sherlock continued. “Based on what's in the file, there seems to have been some differences of opinion between the DI, the DCI and the Superintendent as to what approach to take, how much to give in to the media pressure, and other matters, which slowed down the investigation. By this stage, they were assuming the girl was dead. Despite massive press coverage there were no viable leads as to what had happened after she'd stepped off that train. It was if she'd just vanished.”

“She was snatched at the station, maybe?”

“Don't forget, John, the station would have been crawling with security. Even though there was no CCTV, it was at the beginning of the Irish situation and security in train stations, airports, large public gathering places in London began to be significantly increased. And no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. But it was still one of the more popular opinions simply because they couldn't conceive of any other series of events. Then on August 25th, the last clue appeared. And oh, John, _this_ clue, is what makes this case _sing_.”

“Uh huh. Sounds noisy.”

“John, the girl's been dead for forty-four years. The murderer most likely is as well. Showing some appreciation for his cleverness isn't going to change anything.”

“Cleverness.” John sighed and settled further back into the chair, a familiar bemused look on his face.

“Have you ever been to the Sir John Soane's Museum?”

“Nope.”

“I strongly recommend it. Not, perhaps, a place to take the baby. Sir John Soane was a prominent architect in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and taught at the Royal Academy. He was an avid collector of art, antiquities, architectural models; he designed his home to house his massive collection, his design office, and act as a teaching laboratory for Academy students. One of the jewels of his collection are the original paintings by Hogarth from which the prints of The Rake's Progress were made.”

“Okay.”

“He designed a room in the house especially to display them. The entire house is truly ingenious, but the Picture Room is a marvel. It has layers of hinged panels that nest together on the walls to store a large number of paintings, and you can change the display by folding back the layers. And at the back of all the layers is a small niche, in which is displayed a statue of a nymph. And Carol Evans' killer managed to find a way to smuggle her blouse, encrusted with dried blood, into the museum, circumvent the security in this very small room, open all the panels, drape the blouse over the statue, close the layers of panels, and escape without detection. Are you still going to call me cold for thinking this clever?”

Sherlock could tell that John didn't share his appreciation for the audacity of the act, but was trying to not look entirely repelled by it.

“So what happened? Did they ever find her body?”

“No. And not for lack of trying, for once. With the press all over them, the clues being left in public places, there was no way the Met could let the case die a quiet death.”

“Why would the killer do that? Like he was trying to get caught.”

“Taunting the police, more like. There was one train of thought that the killer was trying to get back at the girl's parents. The DI thought there might be some sort of connection, and wasted days trying unsuccessfully to find a link between the locations of the clues and the parents, but nothing conclusive was ever found.”

“Yeah, well, that's an odd one, all right. You make any headway on it so far?”

“I spent days churning through all the data, from the files, from visiting the clue sites, running it through all my algorithms, and nothing seems to add up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if it were a serial killer, there would be more victims that were killed in similar circumstances, obviously. But there were none. No other missing girls or other public clues. And nothing else from around that time indicates that the murderer had more than one victim. There's nothing in the girl's background to indicate she might have been killed by someone she knew, such as a former boyfriend. But the manner of her disappearance implies she knew her killer, that she went with him of her own free will. But there's nothing definite, and everyone she knew back in Leeds and her friend in London had alibis. And a thrill killer, a stranger who took advantage of an opportunity, well, that seems most likely.”

John must have picked up on the hesitation in Sherlock's voice. “You obviously don't believe that.”

“The patterns are wrong. The drop sites are _all_ wrong. The first is on a reasonably busy street, but not an area that would have much foot traffic.”

“Unless there was a match on that day.”

“England was playing India in Manchester and Middlesex played away that week.”

“So not a lot of foot traffic at Lord's.”

“The murderer seemed to be trying to send a message of some sort but didn't bother to check the newspapers to see if there would be anyone around to receive it. Amateur mistake. The second clue couldn't be missed, though.”

“Yeah, that was kind of tacky.”

“About as subtle as a hammer to the back of the head. But he didn't want to make the same mistake again. It did have the benefit of accomplishing what appeared to be his primary goal: a large number of people were present when the clue was found, so the Met couldn't let the investigation die on the vine. Gossip was just as prevalent then, even without social media to fuel it. 

“The third clue drop location shows another change to the pattern, an ambitious change. The Reading Room of the British Library would have required cunning to sneak the shoes in. They wouldn't have allowed him to bring in a bag or a coat; places like that don't for security reasons, to try to stop theft.” Sherlock leant back in his chair, quietly revelling in his synapses snapping and crackling away. He hadn't felt so productive in months. “Though it's impossible to know in any detail what exact security arrangements were in effect as it isn't used any more.”

“It's like he's getting more desperate for attention. Like he's seeing how much he can get away with, how tricky a place he can get into.”

“Exactly, John. And the fourth clue drop at the Soane's was a little masterpiece. The cheek of it—”

“He wanted people to know how clever he was.”

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow at John's impish tone. “Stop it.”

“What?”

“I'm perfectly capable of keeping the tragedy of Carol Evans' death front of mind, while still appreciating some of the finer technical details of the case.”

“Yeah. So what's the pattern say, other than someone wanting their clues to be found so they can show everyone how incompetent the Met were?”

“That's just it; there is no pattern. I've spent more than twenty years developing the algorithms I use to analyse the work of murderers and I've come to the irrefutable conclusion that I have no idea what's going on with this case. Other than the dares to the police inherent in leaving clues strewn across London, none of the expected elements appear. There was no direct contact with the police, no anonymous contact with the press. And after the fourth clue was found, nothing. It was like he disappeared. Or was himself eradicated by some other thrill-seeking killer who specialised in taking out other murderers. It's all a bit baroque.”

“Maybe he had an accident. Or maybe he just got bored with it.”

“Possibly. It's not likely he'd just stop. There had to be a reason. Thrill killers thrive on attention; they want to be chased and written about, and feared. It makes them feel powerful. The victim is secondary, just a means to an end. Which is why the choices of the clue drops seem strange, especially the last one.”

“Why? Not public enough?”

“Yes. The Soane's might have gone days without finding it. And the British Library? What was that about? No, strange and audacious as it all was, it just doesn't fit any of the patterns.”

“Surely not _every_ killer follows one of those patterns you've deduced.”

Sherlock gave him a look that communicated his disdain for that idea; John was not moved by it. 

So they sat in silence for a minute or so, each lost in their own thoughts. Sherlock assumed John was also thinking about the case, though based on what he'd seen the last few weeks, it was just as likely the man was thinking about his dinner or the baby.

“I'm missing the key, John. I need to find it.”

“What key?”

“The missing piece of data that decrypts the rest of it.”

“Like the book code from the banker case.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe there's another clue you never found.”

“Speculating on the existence of an unknown fifth clue isn't going to illuminate the others much, is it?” Sherlock tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

John frowned, but didn't otherwise react. “Maybe you got something wrong.”

“What? The clues were right there, plain as day.”

“Yeah, but maybe you're— I don't know why I'm bothering.” John gave him a rueful look. “Maybe you miscalculated something with one of those algorithms of yours at the very beginning and it's messed up everything you've analysed since. Like an assumption that's wrong.”

“What assumption? There've been _no_ assumptions regarding—”

Sherlock stopped. Then he retraced his steps. Out of the corner of his mind's eye he saw the tiny loose end and wondered what would happen if he pulled it, very, very gently.

He visualised the pieces of data floating aimlessly in space, carried by apparently random air currents. But with a crook of his finger, the lightest twitch of that thread, the air currents changed and the pieces of the puzzle began to resolve themselves into a picture. It was marvellous. And when all the pieces had coalesced to make a contiguous whole, Sherlock began to laugh. He ignored John's concerned look, not stopping for at least half a minute. It was brilliant. And so horribly, blindingly obvious, just as he'd known from the beginning it would be. The plan was a masterpiece of simplicity, and Sherlock hoped that one day he might meet the genius who had devised it.

He should have seen it sooner, the tremendous incongruity between the drama of the blood-splashed articles of clothing left in public places and the killer's reticence. This disconnect was so great that he should have realised that it would lead him to the core anomaly, to the hidden key. He had missed the pathway to the solution at the very beginning, and finding it had cracked the case wide open.

He amused himself by toying with the idea of keeping the information to himself. After all, what difference would it make to anyone all these years later, other than the pedants and statisticians at the Met, and who cared about them anyway? Sherlock didn't like the idea of the Met chasing down the former Carol Evans and making her life difficult. They might even charge her, which would be ridiculous after all this time. As far as Sherlock was concerned, the woman deserved better. But after basking in the self-satisfaction of having finally pried the beastly and beautiful thing open, he acknowledged that he would need to tell Lestrade or the man wouldn't stop pestering him about it.

So he picked up his phone and texted Lestrade. The fact that the solution to the case could be communicated in six words amused Sherlock to no end.

_Carol Evans wasn't murdered in 1971.  
SH_

“What's going on?” John asked as Sherlock waited for Lestrade's answer.

“Just texting the solution to Lestrade.”

“Really? What is it?”

“She's not dead.”

As Sherlock replied to John, Lestrade's response appeared.

_What?  
GL_

“What?”

“Give me a minute, John.”

_Come by for details.  
SH_

_Can't-out of town.  
GL_

_Off on a dirty weekend with the girlfriend?  
SH_

_It's Monday, you numpty.  
GL_

_I realise every day's Saturday for you, but you could pretend to pay attention to the real world.  
GL_

_Jealousy, Lestrade. Such an ugly vice.  
SH >_

_Really not jealous. Really, really not.  
GL_

“So. What's the solution?”

_Won't be able to make it until Wed.  
GL_

“Patience, John. You've been waiting half an hour for the solution; Lestrade's been waiting two months.”

_Where are you, America?  
SH_

_Edinburgh. Don't ask. Like living in a cave up here.  
GL_

_A cave where it's pissing down 24/7.  
GL_

_See you Wed then.  
SH_

_How about you get the takeaway this time?  
GL_

_Stop trying to get the last word in-you'll never win that game.  
SH_

Sherlock imagined he could hear the man laughing all the way from Scotland.

~ + ~

**Wednesday, March 4**

Sherlock was surprised that Lestrade didn't make more of an effort to come by and collect the explanation for the Carol Evans case. The man was either very busy, his new girlfriend was demanding all of his time, or he wasn't much interested in the details of Sherlock's deduction. Sherlock's money was on the girlfriend.

When Lestrade finally came by Baker Street on Wednesday evening and deposited his rumpled self on Sherlock's sofa, he had a bemused expression overlaying what appeared to be a deep exhaustion. “Carol Evans. Dazzle me.”

Sherlock ignored the borderline sarcasm and paused for a few seconds to ensure he had the man's full attention before launching into his tale. He spared the man the details of his visits to the locations where the bloodied clues had been left. Though he made sure to get a few digs in to the DIs who'd all dismissed the critical absence of a body, ordinarily the centrepiece of any murder investigation.

“Even if they'd managed to conjure up a suspect, any competent defence brief would have torn the case apart on that point alone: there was no conclusive evidence that a murder had actually taken place.”

“Yeah, hindsight and all that,” Lestrade countered as he took off his coat, having apparently realised the revelation wouldn't be quick. “So what happened?”

“Carol Evans faked her death.”

“What?”

Sherlock was gratified to see the man's surprise. “Yes, it's all very shocking. A young woman who appeared to have everything she might—”

“No, Sherlock. What makes you think she wasn't killed? And I want proper evidence this time, not speculation.”

“It's the disconnect between the clues and the reticence of the so-called killer. It didn't follow the patterns. Which meant the 'clues' were fake, meant to lead everyone to the conclusion that she'd been murdered. The only way that the clues make sense is that they're not the artifacts of an actual murder; they're too artificial, not the result of the natural processes of a particular kind of crime. And if no murder occurred, why were the clues created? You see, Lestrade, it all fits if you abandon your preconceptions about the case. And who would have the motive to fake Carol Evans' death other than Carol Evans herself?”

“Okay, all very logical. But you still haven't proven she _wasn't_ murdered. You know, this is becoming a bit of a theme with you.”

“Again, Lestrade, all you need do is send your minions off to track her down if you feel the need.”

“Minions?” Lestrade chortled, before becoming serious again. “I can't close the case without proof.”

“Well, send Donovan off after her. She keeps claiming to be a Detective; let her prove it for once.”

Lestrade gave him the special grumpy face he reserved for when Sherlock disparaged Donovan. “Wild goose chase.”

“But you think it's perfectly fine instead to send me off on one?”

“Sending you after Carol Evans isn't wasting taxpayer's money and a good copper.”

“You say that as if you expect me to care. How many girls born between, say, 1950 and 1955 died in childhood? Get a list of names from the Registrar. Presumably if she faked her death, she needed a new identity. And if she was as clever as the clues suggest, she'd know how to get hold of one. If any of those people show up on the tax or NHS records after 1971, you've found Carol Evans. There, I've even told you how to go about it; no thinking required on Donovan's part.”

“Okay. Assuming you're right, why did she do it?”

“Perhaps, like Deborah Oppenheimer, she was tired of being a good girl and wanted to escape her past. Perhaps she was tired of suburbia and middle class tedium and wanted to live in a commune or become an anarchist. How am I supposed to know? For years you've claimed I know nothing of ordinary human motivations, and yet you expect me to interpret the actions of an unknown teenaged girl forty-four years ago. Are you _really_ that lazy?”

“All right, all right. Keep your hair on. I'll have someone get a list of names and start tracking them, see if we can find her.”

“Then you can close your case.”

“One of them.”

“Three of them, Lestrade.”

“Well, Albert Klein is refusing to talk to us except through his lawyers, and we're nowhere near closing the Robichaud case, so no, you haven't actually solved any of them now I think of it. Did you get a chance to look at the dog war case?”

“Why do you insist on calling it that? Both combatants were murdered; it's highly unlikely their conflict had any bearing on why they were killed.”

“Unless one of the neighbours got tired of listening to them fight about it.”

“That's almost the beginning of a deduction, Lestrade. You'd best not let the powers that be know you can still do real police work. They might demote you back to DI.”

For a tiny moment there appeared on Lestrade's face an expression of such longing that Sherlock paused and let the man recover himself.

“No, I haven't solved your dog combatants case. It's simply unsolvable. There's no data. Everyone associated with the case is dead. Even the neighbours are, except for one, and she's in a dementia ward. No, it's been too long and the data is too sketchy even for me.”

“That's too bad. I was kind of looking forward to that one. That's the one I was expecting a real off-the-wall solution.”

“Sorry to disappoint, Lestrade. But the Met casework was simply not up to snuff.”

“It was 1967. Give it a rest.”

Sherlock shrugged.

“So that's it?” Lestrade asked, looking at his watch. “We're done?”

“Yes, Lestrade, you may now meet your 'lady friend' for a night of geriatric bacchanal.”

For a moment Lestrade managed to hold the laughter in, then let go a few hearty guffaws. “Thanks for that. Needed a good laugh after the week I've had.”

“Glad to be of service, Lestrade. Now get out of my sight.”

The man chuckled again as he stood and pulled on his coat. “I'll let you know if we find anything about Carol Evans. Or whatever her name might be now. Assuming she's alive.”

“She is.”

“Yeah, we'll see. Might have been hit by a bus in 1972.”

“You're doing it again, Lestrade.”

The man waved and flashed Sherlock a grin as he headed out the door. 

“Lestrade?”

The man returned from the top of the staircase. “Yeah?”

“Am I ever going to get my Tottenham Court Road footage?”

“Nope. Me just mentioning it was setting off alarm bells, just like I said it would. And before you start, I'm not asking anyone else to take that risk for me. And they're sure as hell not going to do it for you. Not the way you've treated them over the years. So I probably won't be able to get my hands on it until it's no use to you.”

When he was alone again, Sherlock settled back into his chair and pondered the “dog war mystery”. A silly name for a case and another textbook example of Met laziness. But Mrs Edith Wheeler, like many Alzheimer's patients who couldn't remember what she'd had for breakfast the day before, could remember forty-eight years ago as if it were last week. 

Mrs Wheeler had loved to talk about her Bert. Her jealous, possessive, volatile Bert, always suspicious of any man who looked at her. How she'd been the prettiest girl at the biscuit factory before she'd married. How she'd loved a meaningless flirt to cheer up poor old Mr Jones, who missed his dead wife and liked to give his neighbour roses from his garden. And silly Mr Smith, whose wife had been a horrible nag. 

So the double murder had ended up being boring in its ordinariness, other than the slightly macabre post-mortem posing of the bodies. But a jealous husband murdering two neighbours because he thought they had designs on his young, pretty wife? Nothing could be more mundane. Best to let Lestrade have his fantasies of suburban exoticism. He hadn't appreciated Carol Evans' work, so he didn't deserve the resolution to his self-professed favourite cold case as far as Sherlock was concerned.

 

**Friday, March 6**

For the first time, Sherlock approached his meeting with Doctor Deborah free from apprehension that he would have to defend himself for his lack of progress on the Moriarty case. To his mind, the matter was largely dead until something else happened that could provide him with information. He was done with battering himself against the brick walls that MI5 had built around him. And based on their previous conversation, he assumed the good doctor had finally come around to Sherlock's way of thinking on the issue. So he was perturbed that she insisted on bringing it up anyway.

“There's nothing to discuss.”

“Doesn't that concern you? That you've made no real progress on this case in two months?”

“Of course it concerns me,” Sherlock spat back at her, then paused to calm himself. “I thought— no, I know we've been over this. These sessions are starting to take on a certain _circularity_ that I don't appreciate, Doctor.”

“Well, a big part of _my_ job is keeping you focused on _your_ job. Which, I have to admit, I haven't had a lot of success with.” She sighed. “I'm a shit handler, apparently.”

“Because there's almost nothing for me to focus on.”

“Maybe there would be if you didn't waste your time chasing down people who disappeared forty years ago and have nothing whatsoever to do with this case.”

“As a point of interest, Doctor, just how common is your name?”

“What?” The _non sequitur_ seemed to throw the woman off. She stared at him for a few seconds with a studiously blank look on her face. “It's not exactly rare. I mean, Deborah's a pretty common name for women born in the 50s, especially Jewish women. And Oppenheimer's not the rarest surname around. It's not really common, but—” She shrugged. “Why do you want to know?”

“I came across another one in my travels through the cold cases Lestrade gave me. Sister of one of the victims.”

“Oh.” Either she was an exceptional actor or she was truthfully unconcerned about that fact. She looked back across her desk to Sherlock with no apparent interest in the matter.

“Where did you go to medical school?”

She paused again and Sherlock braced himself for another scalding retort regarding his inappropriate interest in her personal life. “I didn't.”

“Really? I thought you were a doctor.”

“I studied at the Institute of Psychiatry, in London. It's affiliated with King's College, but it's not an ordinary medical school. It's for specialists in psychiatry, not general medical studies.”

“Oh.” So she wasn't the Deborah Oppenheimer who had been Rose Klein's younger sister. Sherlock hid his disappointment behind a shrug. “So I don't need to call you _Doctor_ Deborah, then.”

“Actually, yeah, you do.” Judging by her smirk, she'd seen through his attempted cover. “Is there a point to this line of enquiry? Oh dear, I think I've upset one of your apple carts, haven't I?”

“You've never been an apple cart, Doctor. More a slow-moving train.”

“Engineering works. The bane of our existence in this country. And you're one to talk, Mr 'Don't expect me to get my own data'.”

They shared faint smiles, and Sherlock wondered when she would get around to the actual conversation he knew she'd planned before his arrival. Now that he had what he'd come for, he wanted out of her basement. It wasn't as if she had any way to stop him, but something kept him there and the fact that he couldn't identify it bothered him. Was it curiosity, he wondered.

“How have you been holding up?”

 _And there she goes._ “I'm fine, not-Doctor.”

She chortled for a second or two, then her expression became solemn again. “The lack of progress must be frustrating.”

“Has my brother been in contact recently?” Sherlock asked, in his second attempt to steer her away from the annoying fixation with his supposed sobriety issues.

She looked genuinely surprised by his response. “I've had no contact with him since before the New Year. And you still haven't answered my question.”

“You're dabbling in psychology again.”

“Old habits are the hardest to break.”

He suppressed a sigh. Not this again. “Only for the weak-minded. No one has ever been able to call me that.”

“That's a myth.”

“What is?”

“That only weak people become addicts.”

“Is that your professional opinion?”

“Combined with personal experience, yes.”

“You're speaking from experience?”

“I believe I just said that.”

“You're an addict? I find that difficult to believe. You're too—” He waved a hand in her direction as he turned to peruse the books on the shelves next to his chair. “Boring. Ordinary.”

“The brother of the 'addicts are weaklings' myth is the 'addicts are cool rebels' myth. Probably the more destructive one.” She paused until he turned back; her expression was bemused and he thought a little sad. “Think of everyone in your life. All your friends. Family. Every one of them is addicted to something. Something that makes them think they're happy in a particular moment but which ultimately hurts them. Something they can't let go of, even if they have the self-awareness to know they should. Lots of addictions are invisible; it's only the ones that leave physical or material damage that tend to get noticed.”

The only reason why Sherlock gave her declaration any consideration was to distract himself from the craving for a cigarette. John: danger, obviously. Mary: lies. Mycroft: secrets. Other people's secrets. That thought set something off in the back of his mind that he filed away for further analysis later. 

Mrs Hudson: being needed by others. Molly: martyrdom. Lestrade: saving people. No, being thought well of by others. Mummy: control. Father: acceptance.

“So what is your addiction, Doctor?”

She took a deep breath and stared at her folded hands for a moment. Sherlock found the gesture artificial and coy. She would have known he'd ask her this exact question, and it was impossible she didn't have a pat and self-serving answer at the ready. 

“Detachment, I suppose. One of those insidious addictions: useful in some circumstances and horribly destructive in others.”

“Mycroft would call it a strength.”

“Yes, I imagine he would.”

“Has he really stayed away since the New Year?”

She nodded.

“Blythe expects you to spy on Mycroft through me, though? That's asking a lot of a psychiatrist who claims to not be an Intelligence agent.”

“Is that what he asked you to do when he dragged you in?”

“Why are you asking me things you already know? You're obviously his fallback option.”

She laughed. “God, I _wish_ Blythe told me things like that. I didn't even know he'd brought you in until a couple of weeks afterwards. So he didn't ask about your brother?”

“It was obvious that was the _meaning_ behind every word, but he pretended to ask me to spy on Lestrade.”

“Your Met friend?”

“Yes. Spying on Lestrade would have been, in effect, spying on Mycroft. A pretty poor attempt at subterfuge for someone as high up in MI5 as he presumably is.”

“Oh. I doubt that was what he was really asking you.” She shrugged. “Who knows. And no, he didn't imply in that talking corkscrew way of his that he wanted me to spy on your brother. I suspect he retains that 'pleasure' to himself.”

“They sound like they were made for each other. True brothers in every way but blood. What's he like to work for?”

“I don't, technically. But—” she continued, heading off Sherlock's protest. “He was supposedly an effective field agent, back in the day. Ruthless—” 

“Well, yes. Obviously.”

She chuckled. “Like your brother, he's kicked a lot of heads climbing to where he is near the top of the pile.”

“ _Near_ the top?”

“At that level, the gradations of power are tiny but significant. Or so I've been told.”

“Maris?”

Deborah nodded as she began to toy with her lighter. “She's never said, exactly, but I strongly suspect her father once held a position very similar to your brother's. Officially, just another mid-ranking, clubby Foreign Office duffer. Unofficially—”

“The British government.”

“Something like that.”

“Did he recruit you?”

“God, no. He was much too exalted to pay attention to the likes of me.” She paused, apparently lost in memories for a few seconds. Sherlock had nothing else on his schedule for the day, so let her have her reminiscences. “He brought me back into the fold once, though. For Maris' sake, not mine.”

“You'd tried to do a runner?”

“Better offer from elsewhere.” Sherlock was startled and had no qualms about letting her see it. She rolled her eyes at him. “From our friends to the west, idiot.”

“The Welsh? Since when do they have their own security services?” She gave him a flat stare that almost hid her amusement. “The Irish? Really?” he continued.

“Sherlock—” She smirked. “It wouldn't have worked. Maris made it perfectly clear she had no intention of moving to America. But they put together a very tempting offer.”

“To work with God-bothering homophobes?”

“That aspect of things didn't really sink in until after I'd turned them down.”

“Doctor, I neither know about nor have any interest in my brother's work with the CIA, in the past or possibly in the present, which is obviously what you're angling for or you wouldn't be dropping clanging hints about it. Reel in your line before someone loses an eye.”

She shrugged. “Can't blame a girl for trying.”

“Yes I can, actually.”

Later that evening, as the train made its way back to London, Sherlock felt something shift in his mind. Facts were re-aligning themselves and he sensed that significant change was happening behind the scenes. That a resolution of some kind was coming soon, and he needed to be prepared for anything, because he wasn't sure what form it might take, and if it would be change for good or ill.

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering what Mycroft got up to this week, you can [find out here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/16969977).


	10. Being a killer was within expected parameters for him?

**Saturday, March 7**

“You're moping.”

“I'm thinking.” Sherlock didn't bother looking up from the sofa to where Mrs Hudson was shifting dust around on his bookshelves.

“Well, it looks like moping to me. Why don't you go visit John and Mary. Seeing the baby'll cheer you up a treat.”

Sherlock did the woman the favour of not passing along his thoughts on the matter.

Five minutes later she was back to pestering mode; Sherlock hadn't moved in the interval. “What are you thinking about? Must be important if you're still staring at the back of the sofa like that.”

“Nick Bowman,” he muttered, not really intending for her to hear him.

Behind him, Sherlock heard a sharp little gasp and a _fwump_ as Mrs Hudson dropped into John's chair.

“Why on Earth would you be thinking about him?” Her voice had the distinctive little quaver he hated to hear; it meant she was truly upset and he silently berated himself for being the cause of it.

“It's extremely likely he murdered a man in one of Lestrade's cold cases. That's why he went to America in 2002.”

“Oh.”

He turned over and saw her staring into space. “Do you remember him?”

“Of course I remember him. My Frank shot him in our kitchen not ten feet away from me. You don't forget a thing like that.”

“It must have been—surprising. To see him kill someone.”

“Well—” She paused and adjusted the buttons of her cardigan, avoiding his eye. “Not really. Frank had been in with a bad lot for years. And if there was anyone born to hang, it was Nick Bowman. Horrible man. He had the strangest eyes. Pale, pale grey. Eerie. Like they could pierce you like knives.”

“Was he involved with the same people as Frank?”

“Well, they knew each other through business, but I didn't know any of the details.” Sherlock gave her a disbelieving look, which she rebuffed with a grimace and a wave. “I always made sure I knew as little as possible about Frank's business. Safest that way and I wouldn't end up having to lie under oath later. Why do you care, anyway? He's been dead for more than ten years.”

“Just filling in a few gaps in the case for Lestrade.”

“Who did he kill?”

“A man named James Robichaud. Had a jewellery shop in New Bond Street. His son hired the Bowmans and some of their friends to rob his father's shop; Robichaud interrupted the robbery and one of the gang, probably Nick Bowman, shot and killed him.”

“Sounds like something he'd do.”

“Well, Lestrade still has to _prove_ it.”

“It was him.” Sherlock admired the finality of her judgement. “He wouldn't have blinked, not him. Frank always said Nick Bowman had mercury in his veins.”

“That would explain the eyes.”

She chuckled. “Maybe.”

“Did you know the other man Frank killed?”

“No, I'd never met him. Frank had mentioned his name a few times, that's all.”

“Was it—difficult? Knowing your husband was a murderer?”

“What a strange question.” She seemed a little flustered by it and Sherlock wondered if perhaps he'd pressed her too hard, but she eventually continued without further prompting. “I never thought he was a danger to _me_. But I'd always known Frank was a bit wild. That was a good part of his charm, you know. It was always exciting to be around him.” She trailed off, a fond smile on her face as she seemed to lose herself in memories. Sherlock did his utmost to hold at bay any thoughts that might creep into his mind about his landlady's former love life. The Youtube videos had been disturbing enough.

“So you didn't feel you'd been deceived by him? As if he was a stranger? Being a killer was within expected parameters for him?”

She gave him an uncharacteristically penetrating look. “I think we're not talking about Frank and Nick Bowman any more, are we?”

Sherlock huffed. “Who else could we possibly be talking about?”

She stood, one hand pressed on her bad hip. Then she walked over and bent to give him the gentlest kiss imaginable on his forehead, and ruffled his hair a little. “I don't know, dear. You tell me.”

Before he could recover from the shock and deliver a withering reply, she was halfway down the stairs and Sherlock was left alone with his thoughts.

~ + ~

**Monday, March 9**

“So, I hear you solved your missing girl case,” Mary said as she placed Grace's carrier on the table. Sherlock glanced up from his microscope. “John told you. Why?”

“No idea.” She strolled over to watch him work. “Do you know when Mrs Hudson's back?”

“I didn't know she was out. She doesn't report to me, you know.” He swapped out a slide for the next one in the tray.

“John said there was a related case, too.”

Sherlock paused, wondering at her sudden interest in his cold cases, and this one in particular. “Not related, as it turned out. One was just an ordinary runaway. According to Lestrade there was an epidemic of teenaged runaways in the early 70s, escaping to the bright lights for all the sex and drugs they couldn't get in Leeds, apparently.

Mary laughed. “No, I imagine there wasn't a lot of free love available in Leeds in 1971.”

Grace began to fuss and Mary scurried over to her daughter. Sherlock turned back to his tissue samples and as the quiet minutes began to stretch out, he wondered why Mary was there. “Strange thing, runaways. I wonder what tipped her over the edge.”

“Who?”

“Carol Evans. She abandoned everything: her home, family, her future. She was obviously clever and she decided to use that cleverness to destroy her family. On one hand I can see the appeal; on the other I wonder why she went to all the trouble. Becoming a vegan and joining a commune probably would have been enough of a shock to her parents to have them disown her. Much less effort required.”

He watched out of the corner of his eye for her reaction. He calculated it would take either fifteen seconds of her thinking about what he’d said, or one more verbal cue for her to deduce where he was going. She had a frown on her face and he thought it amusing she was upset at him taking the conversation in that direction, when she’d brought the subject up in the first place.

“You conducting a survey or something?” she eventually asked in rueful tones of acquiescence.

“You can’t be surprised by my curiosity.”

“Why not? It's been a year and a half and you’ve never asked before. What brought this on now?”

Sherlock shrugged. There was no way he was admitting to Mary that he'd never before had any real interest in the details of her past, not after he’d deduced what she’d been. Most people thought themselves interesting, and took it as an affront when Sherlock didn’t agree. Until now, he’d been willing to ignore many of the the glaring gaps in his information, giving her the benefit of the doubt for John's sake. But people running away from their past lives seemed to be a theme lately; or, at least the consequences of that running away. He thought it perfectly natural that his attention should turn to the runaway currently taking up a prominent place in his life. 

She sighed in a failed attempt at wistful disappointment. “What does it matter, Sherlock? None of it matters any more.”

“Of course it does.”

“Saying it doesn't make it true.”

“It does when I say it.”

She laughed, but Sherlock could tell she was still very much on her guard. Then she gave him a small grimace, and capitulated. “To be honest, I'd been doing that job for fifteen years. Not staying in one place for more than a few days at a time, always on the chase. I got tired of it. I wanted to just stop moving, settle down for a while somewhere.”

“Marriage and babies and all the boring, ordinary things?” Sherlock didn't bother keeping the bite out of his tone.

“No, that was an unexpected side benefit.” She smiled. “John changed everything for me. You know what that feels like, don't you?”

Sherlock thought about it. “Yes. Perhaps.” While he was comfortable with Mary's place in his life, he didn't want to talk to her about his relationship with John. Not that aspect of it, anyway. “So your running days are over?”

She'd obviously heard something in his question he hadn't intended, as she looked angry for a few seconds, before her expression returning to its usual cautious bemusement. “I suppose so.”

“So it wasn't the work itself that lost its appeal?”

The question appeared to surprise her, and Sherlock took a grim satisfaction out of being right about that part of the equation.

“It was getting a bit boring. After a while all the jobs start to blend into one another and every place starts to look the same, and before you know it you're wondering how much longer you can put up with it, day-in, day-out. It became just— Ordinary. You think to yourself: why am I still at this if it's gotten so boring? Then you start to look for something else to do with your life.”

“And a way to get out.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“Fifteen years is a good run in that line of work.”

“I was very good at it.”

“Obviously.”

As the conversation petered out, Mary returned to the baby and Sherlock to his microscope. A minute or so later, he heard the street door open and close; Mrs Hudson had returned and Mary began to pack up the baby’s things.

“Sherlock.”

He only hummed in response as he continued writing his notes.

“What I said before, in January. If you need my help, just ask. For Moriarty. I still— There are people I can contact. Back home.”

His head jerked up as he caught up to her meaning. “Does John—?” 

“No. And you won’t tell him.”

His mind instinctively rebelled against the order, but he brushed the annoyance aside. “Who, exactly, are we talking about? Or what?”

“You tell me what you need to know, and I take care of things at my end.”

Sherlock felt momentarily light-headed at the volatile mix of relief, suspicion and surprise in response. He knew he hadn’t caught it before it had shown on his face, so he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t understood what she’d said. Not that she’d have believed such a ruse for a moment, not from Sherlock.

“Let me think about it.” It was the best he could do under the circumstances while he decided what, if anything, he was willing to accept from her on these terms. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She gave him a sad smile, then picked up Grace’s carrier and headed off to Mrs Hudson’s flat.

Sherlock was left alone with his conflicted thoughts. He was desperate enough to grab onto _anything_ that might help him—his fruitless chase after Moran’s ex-wife had proved that—but he was still loathe to make himself dependent on Mary for information. He did not like the idea of her as go-between; she could match-make him with whoever her sources were, but Sherlock hated intermediaries and avoided them whenever he could. And there were too many ways it could go wrong, with a range of costly repercussions, both personal and professional. And for John’s sake, Sherlock didn’t want her exposing herself to discovery, especially because he couldn’t solve the damned case himself.

~ + ~

**Friday, March 13**

Sherlock stood outside Doctor Deborah's office, annoyed and somewhat confused. He'd been knocking on the door for five minutes, to no avail. If she'd planned on missing their scheduled meeting—a schedule she'd always insisted _he_ stick to—the least she could have done was tell him beforehand and save him the tedious journey to Oxford.

As a last resort, he circled around the house to the front and rang the doorbell. To his surprise, a few moments later a startled-looking Doctor Deborah opened the door. She looked up at him, then glanced at her watch. “Sorry about that. Lost track of the time,” she said as she led him through the house.

“The wife out of town again?” he asked as they settled into their now-familiar “smoking in the conservatory while Maris is away” positions.

“Just until tomorrow.” Deborah opened one of the windows and perched on her usual ledge. 

Sherlock knew the heavy rain outside would likely mask their conversation from anyone listening in. Deborah had the sense to always moderate her speech to just loud enough for him to hear, which had made him wonder if she'd had voice lessons in her youth.

“How've you been?” she asked as she tossed him the cigarette pack and lighter.

“The lull continues.”

She watched him light his cigarette and take one long drag before she turned her attention back to her own. The silence was heavier than Sherlock was accustomed to in this house and he wondered if what was bothering her was of a personal or professional nature.

Another minute passed before she broke the rising tension. “Feels like the calm before the storm, doesn't it?”

“A bit. Any word from your chums in London?”

“Not recently.” She paused and took a drag as she glanced out the window towards the neighbour's yard. “The pressure from that direction has been easing off for the last week or so. I'm not sure what that means.”

“Assuming it means anything.” Sherlock strongly suspected it meant that Mycroft was making some headway in his efforts to push back the forces at MI5 that were trying to take the brothers down. “What's our friend Blythe been up to?”

“No idea.” She leant back to close the window and the wall of glass behind her exploded.

In a split second Sherlock was on the floor, arms over his head as shards of glass rained down around him. Without thinking, he engaged his long-past training and curled up to protect his head and torso, half-hidden under the small table where he'd propped his feet a few minutes before. The initial crash had lasted a moment, but glass continued to slide and settle around him and the furniture for a few seconds more. The smallest movement meant more cuts and unknown dangers, so he remained still until everything settled. He felt a fair sized pane of glass resting against his shoulder, the edge biting into his jacket.

“Deborah.”

There was no answer and Sherlock knew he was on his own.

He catalogued his situation. He felt a bevy of small to moderate-sized cuts on the backs of his hands and arms. His jacket was in tatters across his back, but his suit appeared to have saved him from serious injury other than a cut he estimated to be fifteen centimetres long near the top of his left thigh. _The benefits of quality tailoring_. He glanced under his arm and saw blood oozing down the side of his leg. Stitches, but not surgery, he guessed.

“Deborah.”

There was still no sound, not even a moan. A direct hit, then, he knew.

Sherlock took two long, deep breaths, then barged past the adrenaline flooding his body. In the distance he heard a woman's voice. The pitch bordered on hysteria, but he couldn't make out the words; presumably it was a neighbour calling 999 and Sherlock prayed that Thames Valley constabulary arrived before MI5 did. Because the last thing he wanted was to spend the night in what he was afraid was becoming his home away from home. He had more important things to do in the next 24 hours than play verbal gymnastics with Edwin Blythe.

Sherlock resumed his analysis of his immediate environment and decided it was safe to move if he were careful of the layers of glass fragments surrounding him. Glancing up, he ensured he remained well below the now-empty window facing the garden. He saw Deborah, face-down on the floor, a large pool of blood stretching towards him. He'd been correct; at least she'd have been dead in an instant.

Emotions began to crowd into his consciousness and he pushed them aside. He heard an approaching police siren. No ambulance, though, and he wondered about that.

By the time he picked his way across the kitchen, then limped to the front door, there were two solemn-faced constables standing on the front steps, one with a hand up to ring the doorbell.

“What—” the first one began before Sherlock spoke over him.

“I need you to take me to your station. Now.”

“What?”

“MI5 will be here in, I think, less than two minutes, to take this away from you. I'd like to not be part of the exchange.”

The female constable followed the trail of blood from the floor up to Sherlock's leg. “We need to get you to hospital—”

“Yes, yes, eventually. Station and statement first, then hospital.”

“What happened?” The man said, looking past Sherlock into the house. “The neighbour said she thought she heard a break-in, or shots or something.”

“She did. One of the owners has been shot, most likely by a professional sniper, probably from the back garden of the house in the next road, judging by the entry wound in the back of her head.” The constables shared a look and the woman stepped back and spoke into her radio. “I'd venture you won't be needing an ambulance unless, of course, you insist we stand here gossiping until I bleed out on the parquet. Or you could take me to your station house and let me make a statement. Or we can stand around and wait for MI5 to take the entire thing off your hands, in which case I'll probably bleed to death anyway.”

The two constables shared another look and the woman held out an arm to help Sherlock walk. He winced his way down the steps and settled himself as comfortably as he could in the back seat of the panda car. As another vehicle pulled into the drive, he ducked down in the (probably vain) hope that everyone would forget he was there for a few minutes, until he could convince the constables to take him away.

Two men stepped out of the new car; neither of them were familiar to Sherlock, but they were very much in the mould of the eight men who'd picked him up at Heathrow. One of them spoke to the male constable, who was instantly on the defensive; Sherlock knew this wasn't going to help his cause in any way, as it would raise suspicions. One of the MI5 men stayed with the constable and the other strolled into the house as if he owned it.

“Hey! Excuse me! You can't go in there!” The male constable called after the man. 

Sherlock leant out the still-open car door and whispered to the female constable standing nearby. “They're MI5. You _really_ do not want to be here when MI6 arrive. The cat-fights are usually entertaining, but they tend to result in collateral damage.”

She locked eyes with him for a second, and when Sherlock had ducked back into the car turned to call out to her partner. “Gerry! Let's get back to the station, yeah?” Constable Gerry scurried over and she continued, quietly. “He says there's going to be a secret squirrel convention.”

Constable Gerry was obviously torn between what he felt was his duty (secure the crime scene and call in reinforcements) and his sense of self-preservation (get away from the spooks as soon as possible).

“Gerry, let's go,” the WPC said, tilting her head slightly to indicate Sherlock. The two MI5 men had both disappeared into the house, so they had no audience when Constable Gerry slid behind the driver's seat.

As they made their way to the Thames Valley station house, the female PC turned and gave Sherlock an amused look. “I think you can get up now.”

“Thank you, but I think I'll stay down here for a moment.” He was starting to feel lightheaded; he knew he hadn't lost enough blood to warrant it, so obviously it was the post-adrenal crash.

She peered down at his leg, now bleeding all over the seat of the car. “Hospital, Gerry.”

“Okay.”

Constable Gerry executed an admirable illegal U-turn and ten minutes later an orderly was wheeling Sherlock into the A&E department of Oxford's main hospital.

It was still early in the evening, and the usual Friday night assortment of stabbing victims, broken-knuckled yobs and students with alcohol poisoning had yet to pile up in the waiting room, so Sherlock was attended to fairly quickly. He speculated that bleeding men with police escorts perhaps went to the front of the queue, regardless. 

Sherlock held back the little cries of pain that were trying to force their way out of his mouth as a nurse carefully peeled off the shredded remains of his jacket. For the next hour, Constable Gerry and his partner, who Sherlock discovered was named Constable Amy, waited patiently as the nurse and two residents dug out dozens of glass fragments from his hands, arms, shoulders and torso, then stitched him back together. The long gash on his leg was going to give him a piratical air once healed, he realised with a grim sense of satisfaction. Thankfully, other than two small cuts on the side of his neck and one near his hairline in front of his left ear, his face was entirely unscathed. He was not thrilled that they had to shave half a dozen small patches of hair in order to stitch his scalp, though.

“I'm going to look like I have mange,” he muttered to the nurse as she cleared away the instruments.

“I can take it all off,” she replied, brandishing her shears in a way that said she was hoping he'd keep complaining so that she'd have an excuse to do it.

“Um, no. Thank you.”

During his treatment, Constable Amy had found somewhere for him to give his statement. Sherlock was pleasantly surprised at her instincts; she'd somehow known without him having to tell her that time was of the essence, and that staying away from the station for a while might be in their best interest. So when the medical staff were done with him, he accompanied his bodyguard to the small office she had secured for them in order to conduct the interview.

Over the next half hour, as he answered their not particularly well thought-out questions, Sherlock discovered that Constable Gerry carried around a tremendous chip on his shoulder about anyone not raised on a council estate, and Constable Amy very much liked being in charge.

Once Constable Amy wrapped up the interview and tucked her phone away into one of the many pockets of her vest, she stood. “I'm going to need to get this typed so you can sign it.”

“Off to the station we go, then,” Sherlock replied as he limped to the door.

“I'll get you a wheelchair.”

Sherlock gave her a dismissive hand flap. “I'm fine.”

As they slowly made their way down the corridor, Sherlock glanced up at a clock: 7.17 p.m. By now Mycroft would know and have sent his own people to Doctor Deborah's house. The scene would likely be stalemated, with all the various security services circling each other like wolves around a carcass, trying to gain control of the situation.

As they made their way through the evening traffic, Sherlock finally had a few minutes of peace in which he could give some thought to _why_ MI5 (his prime suspect; the CIA rarely hired incompetents) might want him dead, and why they'd been so stupid as to go after him at Deborah's house. They could have shot him anywhere. It wasn't as if he was James Sholto, a recluse living in a secret location. The assassin could have walked in the front door of Baker Street, shot him as he sat at his microscope, and walked back out the door with no one the wiser until Mrs Hudson brought his tea the next morning. So either they'd hired an incompetent or Sherlock hadn't been the target.

But why Deborah? Sherlock's thoughts on the matter had to be put aside once they arrived at the Thames Valley police station. Inside was the bustle and restrained confusion typical of a British police station. Constable Amy found someone to type Sherlock's statement, then provided him with a printout. Sherlock proofed it (only two spelling and three grammatical mistakes) and signed it. 

While the woman left to go make him a photocopy, Sherlock's phone rang. He wasn't surprised to see that it was Mycroft. Over the next minute, two more calls from his brother came through. Sherlock knew the man felt it was truly important for them to speak when he resorted to a text.

_Call me. Now._  
No pissing about.  
M 

Sherlock wondered when his brother would figure out that he should just skip the calls and go straight to texts when trying to contact Sherlock. But then, Mycroft's obsession with secrecy rebelled against the idea of putting anything in writing, so Sherlock knew it was likely a losing battle trying to get the man to change his ways.

Deciding he might as well get it over with, Sherlock did as he was bid and called his brother. Mycroft answered and began speaking before Sherlock even got the phone to his ear. “Where are you?”

“Your manners are slipping, Mycroft. ‘Pissing about’? Are we twelve today? Do you make a habit of being rude to the supposedly mentally ill?”

“Where are you, Sherlock?”

“Thames Valley station, where do you think?”

There was a brief pause and Sherlock could imagine Mycroft's silent sigh of relief. “Please tell me you’ve been your usual charming self with the police and not told them anything of substance. Someone will be by soon to secure your release.”

“Too late; they’re letting me go as we speak.” He paused so that he could eavesdrop on two plainclothes officers discussing the case. One of them, a woman, appeared to be the DI in charge and he wondered why she was still at the station instead of at Deborah's house, jostling with MI5 and MI6. Sherlock listened as she told the man, apparently her commander, that she didn't want any “amateurs buggering up the evidence”. Sherlock sneered and turned back to his phone. “And I’ve already blabbed everything I know anyways, all the gory details. They wouldn’t let me analyse the splatter patterns, though. Jealous, I suspect; they don’t want me stealing their thunder on a juicy murder case.” He sniffed. “The DI's a woman.”

“I have a car on the way; it will there in half an hour.”

“Don't bother. I'd rather take the train anyway.”

“Sherlock—” 

He hung up. He immediately regretted doing so, but didn't want to give Mycroft the satisfaction of knowing Sherlock's relief at speaking to him, so he didn't call back. As he tucked his phone into his pocket, he saw Constable Amy watching. She didn't make any effort to hide the fact that she’d been listening to his conversation, but didn’t comment as she handed him the photocopy of his signed statement.

“We can give you a lift,” she eventually said. Sherlock had the sneaking suspicion the offer wasn’t due to any outpouring of generosity. For the first time since she and Constable Gerry had pulled up in front of Doctor Deborah’s house, Sherlock really _looked_ at her. He berated himself for not having done so sooner, considering he’d essentially put himself under their protection, though he acknowledged he’d been rather pre-occupied at the time.

_Early thirties, law enforcement is a second career after nursing, no, teaching. Recently single. Owns a small dog, terrier of some kind, probably a Norwich judging by the colour of the stray hairs along the hem of her trousers. Principal carer for an older relative. Father? No, older. Grandmother. Unless father much older than mother._

“Why did you decide to abandon teaching, Constable Amy? Did the hours not leave enough time to take care of your grandmother?”

“That’s spooky,” Constable Gerry answered for her as he strolled up, a cup of tea in each hand. The woman just looked at Sherlock with curiosity and accepted the cup her partner held out, before answering. “I can see why that freaks people out. And didn't your mum teach you to not answer a question with another question?”

“You didn’t ask me a question.”

“The question was implied.”

“My mother never mentioned anything about _implied_ questions. And yes, a lift to the station would be most welcome. Unless, of course, your offer was a clumsy ruse to hand me over to MI5.”

Constable Gerry almost choked on his tea. Constable Amy rolled her eyes at her partner before turning back to Sherlock. “The boss said to take you to the station, so I’m taking you to the station, okay? He wants you gone. Now.”

“Ah.” It appeared either that Mycroft had engaged his replacement minion, who had contacted Thames Valley constabulary, or Constable Amy's boss was reasonably clever and had figured out that the Intelligence services were about to descend and be posh at him. Regardless, Sherlock suspected that Lestrade would be waiting for him at Paddington. This particular assignment was sure to make Sherlock unpopular, as it would probably be interfering with “date time”.

With a grimace at the pain in his leg, he led the two constables out of the station, aware of the whispers and pairs of eyes tracking him out of the building. 

A mercifully uneventful half an hour later, he was trundling his way back to London. The train carriage was little more than half-full and Sherlock was able to find an almost quiet corner in which to think about his current situation. 

Everything seemed to be breaking loose, now. The weeks-long stalemate was falling apart ( _finally_ , said a petulant voice in the back of his head). Sherlock suspected that the seemingly random series of attacks were going to be just the beginning, though he still had little idea what, if any, purpose they served. If Deborah had truly been the target that evening, why? Did the latter attack have anything to do with Moriarty? And what about the (as far as Sherlock knew) still-unsolved mystery of who had run down Siobhan Moran and her friends?

Sherlock had been wondering for weeks when the spectre would show up again. There was a certain irony to having whinged about nothing happening and having no data to work with, and then suddenly being presented with buckets of it, but not being able to determine if it was connected to the case, even though all his instincts shouted at him that of course it _must_ be. Coincidences and the universe, and all that.

And if Deborah had been the true target, why was she killed _then_ , in front of Sherlock? Whoever was responsible could have taken her down at any time. Or could they? Sherlock realised that he knew nothing about her work other than what he'd seen during their “sessions”. Did she even have actual patients? In their first session in January she'd admitted he was the first person she'd “handled”. What did she do with the other 150 hours a week that Sherlock wasn't in her office? Perhaps she'd been the Salman Rushdie of MI5 operatives: unable to leave her house for fear of some sort of inter-agency fatwa. 

What had set the murder plan in motion? Had something happened at Head Office that she didn’t know, or hadn’t had time to tell him before she’d been shot? Had she learnt something that someone didn’t want her telling Sherlock? What had she meant by “lessening pressure from that direction”? It was typical of this case that the moment Deborah might have finally become useful to him, someone had to go and blow her brains out.

So he was on his own now. Really on his own, unless Mycroft decided to pull his finger out and start getting involved beyond brandishing Lestrade at him on occasion. If Doctor Deborah had been correct, and MI5 was backing off, then that might be coming to pass sooner rather than later and Sherlock would be damned relieved when it finally happened. Perhaps then Lestrade would get more involved: if Mycroft was better able to protect him from Blythe, Lestrade would most likely be willing to take more risks to help.

Sherlock didn't care what had happened over the tea trolley at Mycroft's club for the socially defective, other than that it appeared to have made his problems start to go away. And be replaced by new ones, of course. Regardless, Sherlock knew that given the first opportunity, Mycroft would insist on regaling him with the details. Though he claimed to find it gauche in others, Mycroft could never resist a good brag about his victories.

When Sherlock stepped onto the platform at Paddington, there was no sign of Lestrade or anyone else who might have been sent by Mycroft. Even more strangely, he saw no one that could have been one of Blythe's minions, either. Sherlock looked around, perplexed by the strange absence of attention, waited a minute, then with a mental shrug headed off to the cab stand outside.

Not until he was at home did Sherlock allow thoughts of what had happened at Deborah’s home make a brief detour from the professional to the personal. He was going to miss her. The realisation that he'd grown to like the woman surprised him. He hadn’t expected to, but apparently he’d developed some sort of rough affection for her over the last two months. Her supposedly inexhaustible supply of lives had run out and Sherlock felt genuinely saddened at her death. She'd been interesting, and the world was already short of interesting people. 

Thinking of Deborah led him back to the circumstances of her death, and the maelstrom of uncertainties and conflicting data about it. Then Sherlock wondered: would he be next? The data he had indicated that Deborah had most likely been the target of that particular hit. Had the plan been to take them both out?

Sherlock rarely gave much thought to the dangers inherent in his work. Worrying never seemed to be worth the effort, in his opinion. But this case was an outlier in every respect; he’d never been subject to such active opposition in a case before. Usually, the client wanted him to actually solve the case in question. 

He wondered if Deborah’s murder meant that someone was getting desperate, or impatient. Or perhaps just sloppy. Had killing her been meant as some sort of warning? Of what? And to whom?

~ + ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wondering what Mycroft and Lady Smallwood and the rest of the government gang were up to this week? [Find out here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6878317/chapters/17134048)


	11. No man with any pride can forget a thing like that

**Saturday, March 14**

Sherlock spent the morning much as he'd spent the night before: contemplating the possible fall-out from Deborah's murder, and reasons why it might have happened. He couldn't help but wonder at the identity of any replacement “handlers” that might be appointed to oversee him. Working with Deborah had given him a new perspective on the work, having it divorced from the acrimony and emotional entanglements of his relationship with his brother. If nothing else, at least he'd proved that he could work with someone other than Mycroft, which might provide Sherlock with useful leverage in the future.

One thing Sherlock didn't need to wonder about was the effect of Deborah's murder on his job. The growing tension over his failures with the “Moriarty” case had been shoved aside, as events had posed a new and puzzling conundrum: why had MI5 made no attempt to bring him in over Deborah's murder? Did they have no interest in the death of one of their operatives? Had they caught the culprit already? Or did they know who was responsible because the hit had been done on their order? And if so, which of the factions within MI5 was responsible?

Sherlock didn't understand why Constable Amy and Constable Gerry had been allowed to take him from the scene. Based on what Lestrade had told him, MI5 tended to treat the police as their personal dogsbodies, but letting them remove and then release their only witness, even though they had him under surveillance, seemed counterintuitive. If he'd been Blythe, he'd have assumed Sherlock would go straight to Mycroft for protection. But Sherlock couldn't see how allowing that would be in Blythe's interests.

And why had his brother made no further attempts to contact him? Sherlock knew there must be considerable re-positioning of the involved parties going on behind the scenes, though it was impossible to tell if the murder was a cause or a consequence. He'd have appreciated being kept informed, even though that would have gone against the grain of the enterprise so far.

Despite his efforts to focus on the consequences of Deborah's killing, Sherlock's mind kept casting back to who might have thought it necessary. Retaliation for Mycroft's success in pushing back at MI5? Had it been meant as a warning that Blythe's people were running out of patience? Perhaps Deborah's luck had finally just run out, and whatever the agency had held over her had come home to roost. Or perhaps Maris had tired of her wife smoking in the house while she was away, and contracted someone to give her an inexpensive divorce. With a mordant chuckle, Sherlock dismissed the last thought as too mundane for his favourite lesbian spy couple.

As Sherlock picked up his rosin from the desk, he heard the street door open and close: Mrs Hudson returning from her usual Saturday morning trip to the shops. Sherlock had always wondered why she insisted on shopping on Saturdays; she was retired and could go any day of the week. He'd concluded that she must enjoy elbowing her way through the crowds. 

At the sound of a faint footstep outside the open door of the flat, he turned, expecting to see his landlady, and froze, hands poised in front of his chest, rosin in one hand and bow in the other.

“Well, this is _exactly_ what I was expecting.”

Sherlock's brain stuttered for a moment. He felt a rush of adrenaline cause his fingertips to go numb for a second and a half. _How strange. I should be more excited than this about being right._ There was a pop and fizzle in his brain, like champagne once the cork has been removed and the pressurized gas in the bottle expanded. He imagined the two of them made an interesting tableau in the room: hunter and hunted.

Careful to not show anything that might indicate he hadn't been expecting the clone or twin or ghost of James Moriarty to appear in his flat that morning, Sherlock tilted his head slightly and looked at the man as if he were any random stranger standing in the doorway of his flat, hands in pockets, and frank curiosity on his face. Sherlock's satisfaction about being correct about the brother not being dead was significantly tempered by the fact he'd allowed himself to be trapped in his own home by the man.

Though it was exactly the same face and mannerisms, it was the voice that convinced Sherlock this was the not-dead twin. Even though the accent had been flattened by decades in America, it was the same voice, down to the sing-song rhythms that made him sound like a demonically possessed child in a low budget 1970s horror film.

While Sherlock waited for his heart rate to return to normal before speaking, he looked over the man, from top to bottom, like a field naturalist cataloguing a specimen. “The brother. How dull. I was hoping for the vault of clones under Baskerville. Or, barring that, a surgically altered double.”

“It takes too long to grow a clone.”

“Mycroft would have found someone who could get around that.” Sherlock dropped his hands to his sides, forcing his body to remain loose, his limbs relaxed, a look of supreme unconcern on his face that he knew wouldn't fool Moriarty. But he had to do it for his own pride if nothing else. He glanced at the man's gun, pointed to the centre of Sherlock's forehead, before moving on to the thin smile that was so familiar. “You took your time,” Sherlock finally said, swiping his bow with wristy flicks. He moved to take a step towards his chair and the gun twitched, just enough to communicate an unequivocal 'no'. Sherlock wondered why the man insisted he remain standing, then realised that he was expecting snipers and wanted Sherlock between him and the window. Precisely, of course, why Sherlock had wanted to sit.

“Well, I had to wait for MI5 to get themselves off your back, didn't I?”

 _And where might they have gone? And why just now?_ “No party crashers allowed.”

“Tends to put a damper on the fun.”

“My brother will know you're here.”

“I'm counting on it.”

Sherlock stilled, rosin pad held against the bow hairs. “So that's how you've been keeping yourself occupied since the New Year.”

As Moriarty walked across the room to stand next to the fireplace, Sherlock shifted slightly in an effort to give potential snipers a clearer shot. 

The other man noticed, of course, but didn't seem too bothered. “Remarkably difficult man to get to, your brother.”

“You're not going to throw clichés around, like 'almost as difficult as me' are you? So tedious.”

“I know. I try to keep them down to one per day, and I've already spent today's.” He pointed at the fireplace. “Did he really do it?”

“Did who do what?”

“Charlie. Did he really piss in your fireplace?” At Sherlock's expression, Moriarty laughed. “God, I'd have loved to see that.”

Sherlock bent over to pick up his violin in a probably unsuccessful attempt to hide his dismay, while he inched slightly away from the window again. _Where the hell are you getting your information?_

Moriarty continued once he saw that Sherlock had no response. “You're just figuring it out now. That I know _everything_ about you.”

Sherlock kept his expression impassive. _Keep bragging. Tell me everything about what you know. Tell me all about your source. You don't even have to bother giving me his name; I can deduce that myself. Tell me about him so that after I've figured my way out of this I can bury him in the same unmarked grave as you after I take your right thumbs as trophies for Mycroft._ He smiled, ensuring he showed all of his teeth. “I wasn’t aware that you knew Magnussen.”

“Never met him. But we were in the same general business.”

“So you’re a _small-time_ blackmailer?”

“In these uncertain times diversity is the key to survival, so my business interests are diverse.”

“Blackmailing MI5 to get access to my file, that's moderately ambitious. Did Miss Adler give you advice, or was it the other way around?”

Moriarty scoffed. “She was Jimmy's client; I never had anything to do with her. If I had, she'd have been taken care of a long time ago. Jimmy always was too sentimental.”

“Why all the effort to keep me in England? That was why you created that ridiculous video, wasn't it?”

“Close thing, too.”

“Why? I was likely to die on that mission; why not let someone else do your work for you?”

“Oh, I needed you here. Sorry about the shitty quality; I didn't have a lot of time to put it together. I hope you didn't take it personally”

“It was no worse than your brother's boring little storytime video.”

“There's only so many hours in the day when you have a criminal empire to run.”

“You call that tiny thing I left you an 'empire'? That's a bit sad.”

“Still plenty to keep me busy, Sherlock. You just got rid of Jimmy's dead wood, anyway.”

“And yet you took the time to give us that little dance routine on the Tottenham Court Road.”

“Yeah, that was fun. I haven't been in London since I was a kid. _Lots_ of changes. It's almost like a real city now.”

“I'll pass along your appreciation to the mayor next time I see him. I'm sure he'll be thrilled you approve. Though I was surprised at the—well, the quiet, once you'd made your presence known. It's not like you to just leave things hanging like that.” Sherlock began to count off minutes in his head since Moriarty's arrival. _How long had it been? Four minutes? Five?_

Moriarty tilted his head to the side, as if trying to look like a man trying to puzzle something out. “Ah, that's it, is it? You think I'm just like Jimmy. I hate to break it to you, but I'm as much like my brother as you are yours.” He tapped himself in the chest with the hand not pointing a gun at Sherlock's head. “I'm a busy guy, Sherlock. Lots on the go.”

“But you thought a second appearance was necessary. Why? I hope you didn't think _that_ was going to draw me out into the open.”

Moriarty laughed. “Oh, Sherlock, that ego of yours will be the death of you one day. This has never been about you; you're just a tiny cog in the machine.”

Sherlock refrained from pointing out that his starring role in the day's events belied that statement, but held his tongue. He needed to focus on keeping the man talking; at least _some_ of what he said had to be the truth, and they would need as much of it as possible, afterwards. “So who are the big ones? Mycroft, of course. His chum Blythe, presumably.” The mention of Blythe's name didn't have the effect Sherlock was hoping for, though that wasn't conclusive.

Moriarty waggled a finger at him, as if was playing a pantomime dame scolding a naughty child. “Now, now. The story has a certain flow, Sherlock. All in good time.”

“You've been remarkably forthcoming, all things considered.”

“You do realise only half of what I'm telling you is the truth.”

“Oh, good; I love a liar. Makes life more interesting.” Sherlock folded his hands around the neck of his violin. “Why did you even bother coming back? It's not as if you've accomplished anything. Except for getting Deborah Oppenheimer killed, and I can't imagine that's much of a win in your books.”

“That had nothing to do with me. You really don't understand this game, do you? But then, that's more big brother's area, isn't it? This has been going on a lot longer than you've been involved. You're just a means to an end, _for everybody_.”

“Just like Jim.”

“Yeah, just like Jimmy.”

“Was he your front man from the very beginning? After all, he'd killed someone at thirteen.”

“I _know_. He was such a scamp. A prodigy at chemistry, too. Just like you.”

“And he joined you in America.”

“Of course he did. Brothers have to stick together. But of course you and big brother don’t believe in that, do you?” Moriarty peered around the room and Sherlock shifted again, readying himself for quick movement when the opportunity presented itself. “I don’t see him around. Such a shame when family don’t get along. Family’s all we have in the end, Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock felt a chill run up his spine. Of course; one of the sets of cameras he'd removed in January had been Moriarty's, and all this time he'd assumed it had been MI5's.

“So you and wee Jimmy: the two musketeers, off to conquer America.”

“You know, I’ve never read that one.”

“I’m sure the prison library will have a copy.”

Moriarty chuckled. “I’m trying to decide if that’s delusional or just sad. No, the correctional system and I are destined to never meet. Funny thing is, you've been my best ally for staying out of the clink.”

“Even if that were true, I hate to inform you that whatever accidental alliance you’ve fantasised into existence is being dissolved.” Sherlock glanced at his watch. “As of now.”

“No, Silly Billy.” Moriarty laughed at Sherlock's grimace. “You were kind enough to make sure Frank Hudson got his just desserts. That was _awesome_ , but the way. Can’t thank you enough. And I didn’t even have to ask. It was as if you read my mind, or something.”

“Frank Hudson?” Sherlock gave an indulgent sigh and added one tick to his running mental tally under the “Truth” column. “Of course. You were afraid he’d plea bargain and sell you to the DEA in exchange for his life.” He shrugged. “Win some, lose some. He had to die, regardless.”

“ _Finally_. After ten years he finally catches up. If that’s what passes for genius in this country, no wonder Britain’s going down the drain. Yes, of course, you did me a huge favour. And Frank did me one, too, by shooting that knuckle-dragger Nick Bowman. He was trouble with a capital T.”

“Interesting approach to thanks you have,” Sherlock said as he pointed with his bow at the gun still pointed at his head.

“Oh, this is business, Sherlock, and you know what they say about business: kill or be killed.” He shrugged. “But it’s funny that that’s how it all started, all those years ago with Nicky and Frank. That was very smart how you managed it. I couldn’t help but admire. That was the beginning of the end for Jimmy, though. I have to take some of the blame, because I told him about you. What a superstar you were. See, after that very clever thing you did about Frank, I thought I might offer you a job.”

Sherlock snorted in amusement and added one to his mental tally under the “Lies” column. “As if you could compete with what Mycroft could give me.”

Moriarty shrugged. “It was for the best, anyway. I sent Jimmy off to give you the once-over. I should have just killed you on the spot instead. Poor wee Jimmy. He never knew he was caught until he was well gone. Little brother was almost perfect, the best front man anyone could want. But he let you beat him. His own fault, of course; he made the mistake of getting involved. I told him to leave you alone, but younger brothers—” Moriarty made a vague, listless gesture in Sherlock's direction. “You and that brother of yours turned him inside out. Jimmy deserved to die because he brought himself down to your level. Ruined himself forever. So in the end he was no loss.” 

“Your family feeling is admirable, though I can’t imagine others would see it that way.” _Ten minutes._ Sherlock tried to imagine snipers poised on the rooftop the other side of Baker Street, lending a pleasing symmetry to his history with the Moriarty brothers. Now he just needed to find a way to give them a clear shot.

“Maybe not. In the end he was practically rogue, so—” He paused for a melodramatic sigh. “He _so_ wanted to take down big brother to impress you, but he got lost in the game. Stupid bastard,” he added fondly. “At least the two of you saved me having to put him down myself. But he was family and no man with any pride can forget a thing like that, can he?”

Sherlock wondered what his own reaction would be to meeting someone who'd been involved in Mycroft's death. He supposed it would depend on the circumstances, but he guessed there was a high probability that a gun would be involved. So on one level he could hardly fault the man’s desire for revenge. 

“We’ve taken care of two people for you. From where I sit, that’s earned us two free passes and I’m afraid I’m going to have to call one in right now.”

Moriarty laughed. “Oh, you English. Love that dry sense of humour. Though that was a pretty poor effort, for you. I guess you’re still in shock from finding out you were wrong about this from the start.”

“I've known about you from the beginning.”

“But you were too stupid to know what it meant. What's the point of collecting all that data if you don't know what to do with it?”

“Incomplete data. Tainted data. Your friends at MI5 were very careful to ensure I never got near what I needed.”

“Oh, Sherlock, cut it out. Conspiracy theories? Has it come to this? You should be ashamed of yourself; you’re better than that. Well, you _used_ to be. Maybe the boring people are right about drugs eating your brain and leaving you inexcusably _stupid_. If I had friends at MI5, you’d have been dead years ago.”

 _Add one more to “Lies”, then._ “Reports of my death are always grossly exaggerated.”

Moriarty rolled his eyes, but the hand holding the gun was steady. 

“So why are you here, Big Jim?”

“Come on, Sherlock. You know why I'm here.”

“He won't come himself. You obviously haven't been paying attention if you think he'll get off his fat arse for _you_.”

“No, but he will for _you_. Hell, he'll scramble SAS squadrons for you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock laughed, long and loud as he calculated how long it would take Mycroft to respond to Moriarty's appearance. Sherlock estimated he needed to kill about eight more minutes before Mycroft's team was deployed around Baker Street. He hoped someone thought to make sure Mrs Hudson didn't return home until this nonsense was over.

“My god, that's the single most ridiculous thing I've heard in _weeks_.” Sherlock wiped his eyes with a flourish. “Thank you for that. Most refreshing.” He noted that Moriarty didn't look at all fazed by his response. “As you said yourself, Holmeses don't go in much for family feeling, so I'm afraid you're going to have to do better than _this_ to get a response. The best you'll get is the fellow who picks up his cleaning. I'm his brother and that's who _I_ get. That or his strange PA.” He waved towards the sofa. “You might as well take a seat. It's going to be a long wait.”

Moriarty glanced from the sofa to the window and back to Sherlock. The man's smile told Sherlock everything he needed to know about his chances of getting Moriarty into a targetable position.

“Ah, the lovely whats-her-name. Fantastic legs; always an important criteria, though I don't imagine big brother cares much.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, as if he himself hadn't spent a good part of the last twenty-five years being bitchy about Mycroft's ambiguous sexuality. “You could probably find my brother at his club or his office. He doesn't have much of a life.”

“Except for the new bestie. Seb's ex. Very interesting choice.”

“ _I know_.” Sherlock allowed himself to share a conspiratorial smirk with the loathsome little troll standing in front of him and he debated the utility of disabusing the man of his misapprehension. He plucked at the strings of his violin to kill five seconds. “So, what's Plan B, Big Jim? Because Plan A isn't ever getting off the ground.”

Moriarty shrugged. “There's no Plan A, B, C, D. Things happen. We respond. There's an inexorable logic to this sort of thing.”

Sherlock chortled; it was obvious that a certain blindness ran in the Moriarty bloodline. “Why are you telling me all this? Even if you are mad enough to think killing me serves your purpose, why not just sit here quietly and wait for him? Do you love the sound of your own voice that much?”

“Pot, kettle, Sherlock.”

“At least I make sense most of the time. Oh, yes, that's because I don't spend most of my time listening to nothing but the echoes inside my own head.”

“He'll come after me eventually.” Moriarty sighed. “He knows he has to; because if he doesn't, I'll just keep killing all his little helper bees—starting with you, of course—until he doesn't have any left and he has to take care of business himself.”

“And Moran was the start.”

“You know, I think I've figured out why you're so shit at this now: _you don't pay attention_.”

“What?”

Moriarty seemed momentarily flabbergasted and Sherlock had to admit it was a horrible attempt at humour. “What makes you think I'd ever work with an overbred idiot like Moran?”

Sherlock ignored the obvious lie. “You had to get a message to Moran; that what happened to Frank Hudson would happen to him if he talked. But you couldn't get to him, so you went after the daughter. Tacky.”

“You really _are_ a fraud, aren't you? Nothing going on under those pretty, girly curls. No wonder big brother can't be bothered to come around anymore. He'd probably trade you away in a heartbeat to get a hold of me.” Moriarty made a fake-surprised face that sent a shiver of recognition up Sherlock's spine. “Oh, but he did, didn't he? He gave you away to MI5 like a broken toy he didn't want anymore. Probably couldn't wait, now you're more trouble than you're worth. Probably didn't even bother asking for anything in exchange.”

 _Let it be Blythe. Please, whatever deities might possibly exist in the universe, let it be Blythe._ “And yet your master plan is based on the belief my brother will drop everything to come running to save me from the tiny bad man.”

Moriarty ignored the insult, which didn't surprise Sherlock; it had been a pretty poor attempt. 

“Of course he will. Pride, Sherlock. One thing big brother has in bucket-loads. You and your ego, big brother and his pride.”

“Yes, and his pride will be exactly what prevents him from running into your pathetically obvious trap. Well, that and his modicum of brains.”

“He'll come.”

“No, he won't.”

“Will.”

“Won't, Jim. If you kill me all you'll do is make him a little upset for a minute or two. But he won't regret not endangering himself for me. _That's_ how my brother's pride works.”

“Ah, that's why you two can't get along. You both want to top all the time.” Moriarty grinned at Sherlock's answering sneer. “I bet you've missed little Jimmy, haven't you? You surround yourself with the slowest, stupidest people you can find to make yourself feel smart, then you bitch about being bored all the time. Well, you know what they say: the world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness.”

“And who've you got, now that wee Jimmy's dead?”

There was no answer for a few seconds and Sherlock thought he might finally have scored a point. 

“I have to admit, Sherlock. After what Jimmy told me about you— the whole Magnussen thing? Not what I was expecting _at all_. Still, it's always nice to see a man stretch himself, try out new things. I never knew before why little brother was so obsessed; you always seemed a bit—what's the English expression? All mouth, no trousers? But even I have to admit that was ballsy. Or _incredibly stupid_. 

“There's a difference?”

“Not as often as most people think, true. But still—” 

“What does Magnussen have to do with you anyway? You're nowhere near his league.”

“But you gave us a great big vacuum to fill, and I plan on stepping right in and owning it. It's time to break out of the sticks and go Big Time. And thanks for making that possible, Sherlock; I couldn't do it without you.”

It was the most Sherlock could do not to laugh. “So much for wanting to keep the cliché count down. Small-time criminal wants to 'be somebody'. Show the folks back home what a real baddie you are.” Sherlock gave him a slow, dismissive up-and-down. “That's the real reason you're back, isn't it? To make some pathetic attempt to show off to your old school chums down in Brighton how you've 'made it'. Prove how wrong they were when they said you'd never amount to anything.” He turned away with a sneer. “Could there be anything more trite?”

Moriarty smiled. “You know why I went to America? Because all you need to succeed in America is to be white and be willing to do _anything_ to get ahead. The American dream writ large, that’s me.”

“Why come back if America is such a criminal heaven?”

“I told you before, idiot boy: Jimmy. I couldn't let you and big brother get away with that, could I? And I had a bit of fun along the way, got to practice a few of my new moves. Not that you would _ever_ have figured it out.” He paused and gave Sherlock a contemplative look that would have passed for sane if you didn't know anything about the man behind it, and Sherlock wondered about those “new moves”. “I can't imagine why you thought you would get anywhere near me. You've been bumbling around the perimeter from the beginning. It was funny to watch for a few days. Then it was just boring, watching you bump your head on the glass, over and over and over again, like a fly against a window. All you needed to do was find the opening three inches away. But you were too stupid to figure out all you needed to do was move over just a bit to find your way in.

“This isn't the puzzle you were expecting, is it?” Sherlock didn't bother to answer; Moriarty gave him a moment, then continued. “Come on, Sherlock. Don't kid a kidder. You were expecting me to come chasing after you, panting like some bitch in heat. But it was never about you. None of it was. But your brother has made me make it about you. You see this gun? This isn't my hand holding it; it isn't my finger that'll pull the trigger, it's his. So don't blame me when you die; it'll be all his fault.”

“How does that differ from the rest of my life?” Sherlock muttered, then he sighed. It appeared that “Truth” had made a comeback and drawn even with “Lies” in the end. For Sherlock knew the end had to be near, one way or another. “So you were panting after _Mycroft_ like a bitch in heat, was that it?”

“Don't be jealous, Sherlock. You had Jimmy; it's not my fault you never knew what to do with him. And us cleverer brothers should play together, don't you think?”

“Sticking to your Dipteran metaphor, you think Mycroft couldn't swat you aside without breaking a sweat?”

“That's a simile, Sherlock.”

“No, Big Jim, that was a metaphor.”

Moriarty sighed and shifted slightly on his feet. Sherlock wondered if he was getting tired, or just wanted Sherlock to think he was. “That's your big weakness, Sherlock. You need everyone to think 'oh, that Sherlock Holmes, he's the smartest guy around'. Problem is, if everyone knows you're smart they're always on the defensive around you. Now, big brother, he's _really_ smart. He lets people think he's just ruthless, and people fear him because of that. But most people are okay with fear, because they're sheep and they're afraid of pretty much everything. Real brains they hate because they know it's something they can never have and they're jealous. No one's ever jealous of ruthlessness; most people think it's too much hard work to bother. The really smart man never lets other people know how much smarter he is. Because that sets people on their guard, and it just slows you down having to deal with that.”

Near the end of Moriarty's little lecture, Sherlock received his second shock of the morning: Mary silently appeared in the doorway. Sherlock wasn't able to hide his reaction, and Moriarty turned for an instant. “Well hello, Mrs Watson,” he said as he looked back to Sherlock.

“Let her go. It'll all be over before she can do anything.”

“Oh, Sherlock. You really haven't been paying attention,” Moriarty replied, with a fake-pitying simper.

Sherlock took a step towards Moriarty and the simper was instantly replaced with a chilling blankness. “You move at less than 1% the speed of a bullet, Sherlock.”

_Yes, but I've distracted you for two critical seconds, Jim._

When Moriarty followed Sherlock's glance back to Mary, his surprise at facing a gun seemed genuine. Sherlock wondered how the man could claim to know everything about him, but not what Mary had been. _Sloppy, Big Jim._

“Oh, goody. A Mexican standoff. I feel like the star of a Sergio Leone movie,” Moriarty said after a quick recovery.

“You must be Moriarty's brother.”

“Well, yes, obviously. The slight resemblance is a bit of a give-away.” He gave the tiniest hint of a bow, while his gun remained unerringly pointed at the centre of Sherlock's forehead. “James Moriarty, at your service.”

“Really?” Mary chortled and looked to Sherlock. 

He shrugged. “Why did you bring a gun to my flat?”

“I always bring a gun to your flat.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I've never been in this room unarmed.”

“So, when I was practising napkin folding, you were sitting at my table with a gun in your pocket?”

“Uh huh.”

“I'm feeling decidedly under-accessorized.” They shared a smirk.

Moriarty turned to Sherlock and elbowed his way into the conversation. “Oh, you _really_ know how to pick your friends, don't you?” He turned back to Mary. “Looks like you married the wrong guy, blondie. Though I imagine this one would be a lot less biddable between the sheets.”

Sherlock slowly turned from Mary, to Moriarty, and back to Mary, while the other man continued. “Poor tragic John. All alone again. Still, it shouldn't take him long to find another replacement; widowers with babies are like catnip to a certain kind of woman.”

Suddenly, Sherlock knew that he'd been right, all those weeks ago. This brother _was_ just like the Moriarty he'd known, right down to the reckless disregard for his own life, his belief that he was cleverer than everyone else in the room, and his inability to take his own advice and shut up about it. Now it was Sherlock's turn to be disappointed. He leant forward, barely able to restrain his glee. “Oh, god. I thought you were supposed to be the clever one.”

Moriarty glanced at his watch. “Twenty-five minutes. Looks like the calvary's not coming, Sherlock. It's not like I _want_ to kill you; you're a nice diversion when you're not being a stupid dick. But it's time to teach big brother a lesson.”

Sherlock made the “talk-talk-talk” gesture with his hand in response. A lovely smile crossed Mary's face and a twinkle appeared in her eye. Sherlock started to wonder at the timing of Mary's arrival, and why Mycroft's people hadn't yet. Or perhaps they had, he realised as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, her gun hand steady as a rock. 

“You think I won't kill you the moment you pull that trigger?” Mary asked Moriarty.

“What makes you think you'd get out of this building alive if you did?” he replied with a feral little grin and Sherlock wondered where Moriarty's people were and whether or not Mycroft had managed to neutralise them, again. “You sure you want to expose yourself like this? Very risky,” Moriarty added to Mary in his sing-song tones. It was as if the hand holding the gun were the only part of him still interested in Sherlock, and Sherlock watched carefully for the man's first mistake as he continued to address Mary. “But I bet you've always liked games, haven't you?”

She smiled again. “You want to talk about games? To start, if you're going to play it's a good idea to read the rules first. And you've forgotten the first rule in the Evil Overlord's Handbook, Jim: just shut up and kill.”

And as Sherlock dropped to the floor, she did.

~ + ~

the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, that's not the end! Not really, for there are still two stories in the series to go. 
> 
> If you haven't been reading the third fic along with this one, the third story in the series is Mycroft's, in case you've been wondering what he's been up to. There's politics, espionage, double-dealing and other fun things, with Mycroft, Lady Smallwood, not-Anthea, Sir Edwin and more OCs (one of whom you've already met).
> 
> The fourth story features Sherlock and John searching for the murderer of Deborah Oppenheimer. ETA for the fourth story is October 2016.
> 
> Thank you all for coming along on this long, strange trip! And an especially hearty thank you to the lovely dioscureantwins, without whose help this wouldn't have got off the ground.


End file.
